Ecocash Attempts To Keep It All In Their Ecosystem

William Chui Avatar
Ecocash merchant payment, computer shop, whatsapp scam, security

An announcement that has come through from Econet, the owners of the Ecocash services company is that they have reduced their merchant ‘merchant fees’ for their customers by ‘as much as 50%’ with immediate effect.

This is a follow-on to their ‘no merchant fees on Thursdays‘ initiative that they ran from April up to end of June, though no data is available as to how successful that campaign was, a reduction in fees will come as a sigh of relief to Ecocash users who are also affected by the heavy cash crisis currently affecting Zimbabwe.

With a staggering 27,000 possible merchants, the biggest mobile money payment solution, which I refer to as a ‘bank’, is making concerted efforts in order to keep customer funds within their ecosystem, which will hopefully see customers not ditching Ecocash due to the challenges one is sometimes faced with.

In their announcement, Ecocash has not made mention of exact figures of the new fees, we’ll update as soon as those are available, but for a $1 payment one can expect to pay only 1c (I’d presume that the fine print here is that Ecocash will only charge 1c, while there is a 5c transaction fee tax imposed by the Government).

These reductions in transaction fees should see customers opting to pay through Ecocash, hopefully, with some kind of effort being put towards bringing on more shops, restaurants, fuel filling stations and other places one usually needs to pay, reducing one’s desire for cash.

Do you foresee yourself using your Ecocash account more than you have been after this announcement? If not, what would you say would need to be done in order for you to make Ecocash (or any other non-cash option for that matter) your default means of payment?

7 comments

  1. Ok

    It’s a great idea for boosting the volume of transactions, but my issue with Ecocash is reliability of the system and the ‘cash’ part. This past month my pay came through Ecocash and after my crash course on the eco way of life, I’d rather use my card and queue at my bank (it hasn’t sold out so no integration yet!) than let myself be dependent on Ecocash again. Still, with this initiative I can see myself using it more than I did before.

    1. Garikai Dzoma

      The problem is not with Ecocash. If more and more people accept electronic money there will be less need for cash. In fact as the cash premium (i.e.) the cost of acquiring cash increases more and more people are going to ditch it. Believe me the market has a way of rectifying these things.

      This reduction will go a long way in solving the micro-transaction problem which the government is not helping by charging 5 c on transactions below $5

  2. Macd Chip

    That is the way to go, its unfortunate in Zim people still think have money is moving around with a lot of hard cash showing off

    1. Ghost

      Believe it or not, that might actually be a good thing

  3. Goddie

    I feel those merchant fees must apply to Debit cards when used on ZIMSWITCH pos machines because operating a phone when making a transaction is so hectic

  4. Henry

    Ecocash transactions can be tricky as i found out a week ago. I paid a retailer and the money was deducted from my Wallet but it did not reflect on the retailers side. A visit to an Econet shop and i saw a few other people with the same issue. Ecocash for me is now the last resort when making payments

    1. lol

      Its not ecocash with the problem. ifu went to OK Zimbabwe and they did processed your payment using that POS its an ok system with a problem. They are stealing from the public with that system as they are now receiving transaction fees… DONT trust anyone in ZIm

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