Econet to launch Point of Sale EcoCash debit product (updated)

Remember when Econet promised they’d be launching a product that would excite the whole EcoCash ecosystem? It’s probably happening tonight.

Earlier today we got an invite to attend an EcoCash event at which, from our first impressions looking at the invitation (image above on the side), we thought they’d be launching a card based EcoCash product. Which would be strange of course, but strange things happen in a market where the banked population is used to using cards to transact. A card based product is not what they are launching, a source shed the light; its actually a POS based product that communicates with the mobile phone.

According to our source, the company is actually launching a Point of Sale debit product that will use the mobile phone (and by extension, a subscribers EcoCash Wallet) to transact. How it works, we’re told, is that an EcoCash subscriber will communicate with the EcoCash POS machine using their phone to make a payment and the POS machine will print out a receipt. Essentially the same way someone would swipe, a VISA debit card say.

As far as we can tell, the POS machine will communicate via either GPRS, EDGE or 3G. But we could be wrong, and if we are, we’ll surely find out in a few hours. Follow our Twitter account @techzim where we will post live updates from the launch event.