I went to an EcoCash Agent to withdraw the $60 I needed to buy a ticket for the Startup Weekend. I had $62 in my EcoCash wallet in my EcoCash wallet then. When I tried to make a withdrawal, I got this message:
I didn’t realise that the transaction fee for withdrawing $60 is $2.30 so I could not only take out $59.
But $59 wasn’t enough therefore not an option. So I needed to be creative and find a way to beat the system. How could I take $60 out when I have less than $62.30 in my account? The vulnerability in the EcoCash system is in it’s pricing.
It costs $2.30 to withdraw $60. But it costs $1.50 to withdraw $50 and $0.30 to withdraw $10.
So $1.50 +$0.30=$1.80. By cashing out $50 and then $10, I was able to take my $60 out and I still had $0.20 left in my account.
I can’t wait though for the day when all transactions fees will go down to a thousand satoshis
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Nice hack! Will actually try the $0.00 charge for withdrawing $1. Imagine you can withdraw $10 free o charge!
Thats beautiful man will try that one as well
Nokia Lumia. Sigh.
i was actually wondering wtf generated those screen shots (thought maybe visual studio, dark them hahaha). I live in a cave, havent seen windows phone in action
The windows phone is easy on the eyes and sexy but from my experience, I would not recommend it to anyone – it’s slow (takes many seconds to open or switch to an app) and many of the best apps are not yet in the windows store. & it doesn’t look like they are going to be coming any time soon. But that’s just my opinion!
I dont know which phone you are using, but the lumia 920 is very very fast and which apps are you refering to? because all major apps that people use day to day such as FB, Whatsapp, WordPress, Outlook,Dropbox, Audible, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedIn and Twitter are available in the windows store. The youtube app is currently down due to a dispute between MS and Google. Besides that what day to day major app fit your claim? Please clarify before making such a claim. The Apple Store and Google’s play store have far more apps than the windows store granted because they have been in existence longer, however to claim “many of the best apps are not yet in the windows store. & it doesn’t look like they are going to be coming any time soon ” is stretching the truth as it is a blanket none specific claim on the apps you are talking about and also flies in the face of evidence of the rapidly growing windows store! There are an average of 500 apps being added to the windows store everyday!
I develop on all 3 platforms and i research on these and i can assert that claim is simply not accurate.
have you used lumia 610 ,what a piece of shit wprk
Alternatively you can do 5 times $10 transactions and get the same saving but i wonder how the Ecocash agent will react
6 times rather
Lol! Now thats the real definition of a hack! (non-malicious)
This made my day. My post of the year!!
+10
Thanks for the love man. Deep inside, anyone who blogs, really does it for comments yours. Everything else is background noise.
i suspect they have some protections around the number of transactions you can do so be careful you might hit a different limit preventing you from using ecocash altogether if only temporary
mathematics in action
I bet you the Econet money mongers have already patched up this vulnerability somehow
Never seen people so greed of money like econet
Kkkkkk all this just to save a few cents, inga life mu Zimbabwe yaoma
Manage the cents and the dollars will take care of themselves!
manage the cents and the dollars will take care of themselves!!
Yeah! Unless you’re penny wise and pound foolish
Tawanda Kembo just prank us as a Eco-cash hacker!!!
Well that’s a good hack. I went to a Telecel agent and was mistakenly told I could cash out $13.00 for a charge of $0.50. the agent then realised they had no cash and twenty minutes later after talking to Telecash client services, I got a “reversal” of $13.00 to go and cash out at another agent. I duly did so and was charged another $0.50. On approaching Telecel I was told that there was no way they could refund my fifty cents! They do not have a facility for reversals! WHY?
Tawanda Kembo….lol!!!!
Another “Hack” is instead of depositing money into your wallet then sending the money, you can just “Cash In” directly to the person you want to send the money to. its what i do all the time. so instead of getting charged $2.50 for sending a $100 i just “Cash In” the $100 directly to the person i want to send the money to… and walaaah no charge lol
That could cost you if you make a mistake and cash in to a wrong number. Econet won’t be as supportive as they view direct cash ins as illegal activity
I think that making sure you enter the correct recipients number should be the senders responsibility, not Econets. In fact, non-repudiation of transactions is the best thing I love about Ecocash. This makes Ecocash a better way of making payments online than credit cards. If you sell anything online and accept credit cards then you know that you can make a sell and deliver the goods but the recipient can call their bank six months later and say that the goods were never delivered. Immediately, the transaction is reversed and you are fined even if they were lying. This process is called a chargeback.
Ecocash, though far from perfect, seems like a better alternative to credit cards in other cases but you have a good point there.
Actually an Ecocash Agent wont allow you to Cash In in someone’s phone unless you have the phone and the person’s ID
why my comment is not showing
I am liking the Nokia Lumila screenshots. Nice hack I will use it as well just to appear cool to my girlfriend who is always complaining that Ecocash is expensive 🙂
If you really want your girlfriend to think you’re cool, use something like Bitcoin
Kikiki. Yah bitcoin kikiki. But i hear they are trying bitcoin accounts at Harvard for students to see how it works.
On another note, EcoCash has some serious constraints if you want to do big business. That $1,000 limit per day is nuts when u really want your money out of EcoCash. Nw i just keep under $500 in EcoCash and the rest in my bank acct
Actually, the $1k limit is not Econet’s fault. Those restrictions are imposed by the Central Bank and here is how it works:
Every money service business is required by the Central Bank to collect KYC information from it’s customers. This KYC information is stuff such as proof of identification, proof of residence, etc and the goal is to stop people from laundering money. Now Ecocash wasn’t going to work if they were to adhere to those rules so my guess is that they negotiated with the Central Bank and were allowed to operate a money service business without having to collect such information as proof-of-residence or passport-size photos but in return would only allow people to send and receive small volumes of money. This makes sense for 2 reasons:
1. No one can really run a money laundering scheme moving such small volumes.
2. Mobile money was new concept, not just for the RBZ but internationally and they did not know how to regulate it so by allow Ecocash to operate with stringent restrictions and limitations they could learn and understand it and put themselves in a better position to regulate mobile money businesses in the future.
if you have an android fone, jus press your power button at the same time with the volume down button, boom screenshot
Thank you for saving me money as I will do in my next transaction.
this is awesome will try it smtym
[…] days ago, we posted an article that essentially showed how you can game the mobile money tariffs by splitting the transaction amount so you can pay […]
Apparently Mr Tawanda Kembo is now a mathematician. I like it man wen you put yr Calculus skills into action. That’s called Application of Knowledge.
Haha Tidza, all the who were not in our class in college won’t be able to see the sarcarsm that’s here. My only response is that: “at least i paased the discourse course ;)”. Anyway, ndirikuudzwa na Chantele kuti wakazozviita ka. Wakadii kundiudzawo amana?
[…] the tremendous convenience, the charges are very exorbitant. Thank our lucky Stars,a writer from Techzim, one Tawanda Kembo has discovered an ingenious hack to get around Econet’s ridiculous […]
Kembo everyone is calling u a mathematician,well dats tru!
hahahaha. Very ironic hugh?
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