Econet signs up over 2,000 merchants for its EcoCash ta! NFC payment service, eyes tollgates integration before 2017

Back in 2015 local mobile operator Econet Wireless’s mobile money subsidiary, Ecocash, introduced the EcoCash ta! – a Near Field Communication (NFC) payment system as part of its strategy to expand its payment options.

EoCash ta! provides users with a sticker that is linked to their mobile money wallet. To make a payment a user simply taps the sticker against a merchant device.

Now, close to a year after that launch the service Econet has registered over 2,000 merchant signups for the EcoCash ta! The merchants are the service providers that offer an EcoCash ta! payment facility.

Some of these merchants include Zimpapers, Dairibord, Total (the fuel services company), Colcom, Ster Kinekor, Ligi (a sports bar chain) and Engen.

EcoCash is also pursuing plans to integrate the tap to pay system with the country’s tollgates before the end of 2016 as the company tries to deliver the value of NFC payments to various stations.

These details were shared in a 12-page EcoCash ta! supplement published in the Herald.

Ecocash is clearly intensifying its efforts to promote this payment alternative which is geared for micro-payment/micro spending patterns which can be frustrating to execute through standard EcoCash procedures.

As the country’s cash crisis deepens and the Central Bank prepares to introduce the unpopular bond notes alternative, services like EcoCash ta! that provide an easier way to make the smallest of transactions will be in focus.

The only hope for subscribers on EcoCash is that a lot more than 2,000 merchants and the ZINARA tollgate network are signed on.