The increased use of Ecocash in daily transactions has been a convenience to many Zimbabweans. More so, the introduction of “Swiping into Ecocash” service has enhanced the platform. Although the service has recently gained unpopular attention for operation failures of the system marked by making double debits from a single transaction, it has served as a refuge to many customers who need to use Ecocash in transacting and whose banks are not integrated with the Ecocash platform.
It may come as a disappointment to many to know that the “Swiping into Ecocash” service is now almost impossible to do with many merchants refusing customers to access the service.
Why are merchants refusing to let people use the “Swiping into Ecocash” service?
First off let me explain how the service work. A customer approaches a merchant and asks the merchant to swipe into their Ecocash. After swiping into Ecocash, the only fee the customer is charged goes to a respective bank hence the merchant is just offering the Point of sale machine (POS) to the customer for nothing in return.
Perhaps because merchants don’t benefit by allowing a customer to access the “Swipe into Ecocash” service could be the reason they are now refusing.
The recent surge of complaints about interruptions and failure of the service which in turn is causing merchants to be involved in the recovery of money that would have been unprocessed or debited twice could have prompted merchants to decline giving POS machines to people since they get into a hassle which doesn’t benefit them.
If the service is totally gone this will affect many people relying on the service, banks benefiting from the fees charged and Ecocash benefiting from “cash in” money. So perhaps, banks or Ecocash will take action to resuscitate the “Swiping into Ecocash” service.
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8 comments
Barclays please integrate into something…zipit and ecocash…. Not just accepting money like a black hole
Is just me, or is the title all there is to this story? I feel like I didn’t get any more information from the article than what the title already says. Should’ve just tweeted, maybe?
I disagree. The author makes a very valid point about the fact that the merchant only gets hassles as a result of failed transactions and receives no benefits which as is usual, accrue to EcoCash and the bank. Ecocash has become like Facebook. It is too powerful and dangerous. People should simply stop using it and use low-cost, ZIPIT enabled payment service providers like MyCash and Telecash. Much cheaper and ultimately more convenient. With MyCash you can swipe anywhere as well as pay via mobile phone. $0.25 to send up to $1,000. Beat that EcoCash.
Okay. I may overlooked the points you mentioned. Still, I would have preferred he cited the Merchants he is talking about, and what they, themselves, are actually saying. You know, a little more journalistic, despite this being a blog. If anything, might have helped the article have less of a heresy tone to it.
I do agree though, that this service needs more polish.
i only come to techzim to read the comments section. i always laugh at the So much negativity people have. its amazing.
this have been a very common problem for a while now. almost all filling stations do not allow swipe to ecocash even though they have steward bank pos machines. all chicken inns also the transaction just fails like its been disabled. since i was a Barclays customers i have relied on going to an econet shop just to do this.
The article is framing the problem as if it’s rogue merchants refusing to swipe into EcoCash. Merchants don’t want extra hassles especially from something that isn’t their core business. The article should be titled “Faulty integration forces merchants to decline Swipe to EcoCash”. It’s not mechant problem, but rather a Steward Bank or Ecocash systems intergration issue.
Much as I admire innovation in general, I’m very disappointed when a product that is not very well-polished is foisted onto the unsuspecting market. Is running tests not part of this “innovation”? Surely end-to-end testing is required between EcoCash and each of their banking partners? Or improving the logic to automatically reverse or even better, prevent the duplication? To me this sounds like a bad design issue coupled with very limited exception testing.