At first glance this looked rather interesting. A service that allowed CABS account holders to send money to any mobile money number. That initial excitement faded though as I went deeper into CABS’ new service Send-to-Cell.
How does it work?
As mentioned before CABS customer can send money to any mobile money number regardless of whether the user has a CABS account or not. CABS customers can access this through the bank’s USSD code (*227#).
The first catch is that the recipient of the money has to create a CABS Textacash account in order to use the money. Recipients can also do this through CABS’ USSD code.
The second catch, the sender will incur a 3% service charge for sums over ZWL$100.00 on top of the Intermediary Money Transfer Tax (2% Tax).
Who is going to use this?
I am struggling to understand who this service was designed for. I can’t see what convenience this brings to CABS customers. A total of 5% in charges for a transaction as low as ZWL$100.00 doesn’t strike me as something that many people will line up to use
If we compare this to EcoCash going by their recent service charge increase, the 2% Tax kicks in for transactions ZWL$300.00 and above. That threshold makes charges for sums underneath ZWL$300.00 tolerable. Speaking of EcoCash, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who regularly transacts who doesn’t have an EcoCash wallet.
On the non-Textacash customer side of things, it would be simpler just to get the money over EcoCash or bank transfer. There is no caveat too that would draw non-CABS customer to register for Textacash.
What’s your take?