Ecocash, arguably the biggest ‘bank’ in Zimbabwe, with probably well over 4m subscribers, has zero rated merchant payments every Thursday up until the end of June 2017.
I’m not too sure whether this incentive needed to be thrown, as due to the cash crisis that has been prevailing in Zimbabwe, a number of us have been resorting to making payments through ‘digital platforms’/’plastic money’ such as Ecocash, as it has become the more convenient solution.
A subscriber does not need to do anything different, probably just asking those that they are paying for their Merchant number, and making the payment to that account instead. The 5c tax however is not waived, so budget to cover that as well.
For now, most Merchants require you to come “in store” and after making the payment, they’ll then credit your account, but services I can think of that you can pay using your Ecocash account are:
- Zimpapers – Herald, Chronicle, Sunday Mail, H-Metro newspaper subscriptions
- Payments that use PayNow as their payment solution
From the Ecocash website, this will potentially be a $1.25 to $1.50 savings and hopefully if you’re a merchant, now would be a great time to get your customers to know about this convenient way of them paying you.
Ecocash are looking to “ease the burden of performing financial transactions in line with the national financial/economic inclusion agenda”. They’ve seen huge growth on merchant services, following the nation’s focus on cashless transactions, in collaboration, they are incentivising customers to make it easier especially for those that are still accepting as well as converting the late adopters on electronic payments – they can try it out on a zero fee day and see the benefits of the convenience.
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4 comments
There’s nothing to argue about, EcoCash is NOT a bank, “bank” or ‘bank’. 😉
It is!
I strongly disagree with you that “Ecocash is NOT a bank, “bank” or ‘bank’.
The strength of sentiments must be backed by facts. EcoCash is a wallet, a temporary store of money, and money transfer agent. A wallet, doen’t offers neither banking services, nor interest. As such it tends to store small sums of money for short periods of time. You don’t keep your savings in EcoCash, even though you technically could. From a legal perspective, it is regulated by the RBZ as a MTA not a bank for the same reasons. Services like EcoCash Save and the Debit MasterCard are done in partnership with an actual bank, Steward Bank, with EcoCash as proxy.