EcoCash ZW$5,000 daily limit relaxed but new restriction added

Back in September a seriously prohibitive ZW$5000 daily limit was placed on EcoCash subscribers. The huge blow disincentivised people from using EcoCash since it meant one simply couldn’t make certain basic payments using the mobile money service.

EcoCash and OneMoney have announced that the limit will be getting relaxed – from ZW$5000/day to ZW$35 000/week. Yes, previously you could only use a maximum of 35 000/week but with a daily limit of 5 000. Now you’ll be able to use ZW$35 000 in one day if you wish to do so.

Good news, EcoCash individual spending limit is now ZW$35 000 per week. You can use up this limit in 1 or more days.

EcoCash message to subscribers

This means mobile money users and regular consumers will be able to use their money with more flexibility and some of the use cases we mentioned as being unavailable (e.g paying for certain consumer internet packages) will now be available once again.

Interestingly, there are still going to be some restriction meant to discourage money laundering. There is going to be a ZW$5000 limit per transaction which means if you are transacting above that threshold you will have to do so multiple times.

Whilst this is certainly an improvement over the previous restrictions, there is still a lot of friction when it comes to using mobile money right now. If Zimswitch’s ZIPIT Smart gains traction there will be very few reasons to use mobile money in its current state – which means EcoCash and other mobile money services are still in a perilous place despite the relaxation of the limits.