Mukuru Debit Card

Mukuru launches mobile prepaid debit card in South Africa

Mukuru.com has just announced the launch of a new cellphone based debit card in South Africa. It something like mobile banking services locally, except this is optimised for existing Mukuru services in addition to using the card for regular banking and point of sale. The new card is backed by Standard Bank.
The details

Econet Wireless, vanishing airtime, POTRAZ, and transparency

What would have happened if subscribers hadn't taken to social media to complain? What about if this had affected just 50 people who all didn't notice? How do we even know this was the first time? What mechanisms does POTRAZ have in place to ensure these glitches are detected when they happen? Does POTRAZ audit the MNO billing systems?

More than 3,100 hours of movies coming to Wabona

Last week, when we posted an article about Wabona’s new flat monthly subscription based model for their internet movie startup, we speculated that there may be issues getting content (or rights to put it on the net) for the startup as there still seems not much content on the site.
Review: The Econet 3G mobile Wi-Fi device

Review: The Econet 3G mobile Wi-Fi device

Close to two weeks ago, we received a test unit of the Econet Huawei mobile Wi-Fi device for review. Being a small operation ourselves, we decided to start using it as our primary office connection since then so that we speak about the reliability, stability, speed and other things from a point of actually having needed to rely on it.
Internet movie startup Wabona moves to subscription based model

Internet movie startup Wabona moves to subscription based model

Wabona, a South African based online move startup founded by two Zimbabwean last year has moved from a per movie payment model to a monthly subscription based one. In an email to their customers, co-founders Simba Mabasha and Simukayi Makuna announced the change over the weekend.

New Econet Services company a response to plateaued telecoms business

In October last year, it emerged that the Econet Wireless Group had formed a new company to drive the EcoCash mobile money service. Econet Services. The new company wasn’t “launched” or “announced” formally in the market, as far as we could tell at least. The change was treated subtly by Econet in as far as the market was concern.

With ZESA so unreliable, why aren’t we keen to produce our own power

Something that has always struck me as strange is that no matter how unreliable the national power company’s supply is, there's just not that many people that consider solar power an alternative. By the urban middle class, solar is regarded either as a rich people’s luxury, or, on the other extreme, a rural village utility.

About moving web hosts #techzim

To improve availability and speed of the site, we migrated Techzim to new hosts a few weeks ago. Last time we did this was about 2 years ago when we moved the site from local Zim hosts.

Barclays Zimbabwe to launch mobile banking service, Hello Money (updated)

Barclays will be launching its mobile banking application Hello Money, in Zimbabwe this month. The announcement was made as part of the launch of new ATMs by the company a few days ago. Hello Money will allow Barclays account holders to transfer money to a Barclays account or to an account at another banking institution, airtime top up, mini statements and balance enquiries.