You are not the only one, EcoCash is down

People have been reporting that EcoCash is facing some challenges since last night. Service was restored a bit since then but it seems to be facing challenges again today. Several people have shared that EcoCash is not working for them as they are trying to make some transactions using the mobile payment solution.

For some people, it is not working at all when they try to use it via USSD code while for others it is working using the same access method but it is taking some time to even get to the point where you enter your pin code to log in. After successfully logging in, it is working but it’s not as reliable as it usually is since it is also failing at some points.

Other people who are using the EcoCash app, which requires an active internet connection, are reporting that EcoCash is working just fine for them as they haven’t faced any problems. Given how EcoCash processes over 90% of all the mobile money transactions that occur in Zimbabwe, it being down is quite inconvenient to a lot of people.

With Zimbabwe facing a cash crisis, most people are now accepting EcoCash as a payment method and if they can’t process the payments due to EcoCash being down, then they stand to lose a lot. Yes, they might also be able to swipe as a payment method, however, even ZIMSWITCH and ZIPIT which power most of the point of sale transactions in Zimbabwe went offline for quite a long time last week.

It seems like the most used ways of transacting with plastic money are facing some problems recently. ZIPIT explained their outage as due to a system upgrade but most of the banks weren’t sure what was happening so was it really an upgrade? EcoCash has acknowledged the service disruptions on their Twitter and according them, their technical team is working on bring back the service to normal functionality but they haven’t explained why it is down.

For both platforms, it is probably due to the fact that the number of transactions they have to process has gone up especially recently when people got a scare on social media and ended up panic buying basic commodities. Hopefully, this is just a temporary disruption and the service will be restored soon.