Cassava remit, the remittances arm of Econet Global, recently announced that all EcoCash remittances done via their service will be payed out in USD. The service EcoCash home wallet was launched earlier this year in the UK with the aim of helping someone there to be able to pay for bills and/or services in Zimbabwe.
Before, if a relative abroad sent money to someone in Zimbabwe for bill payments, it could have been used for other things without their knowledge. Using Cassava remit, the guarantee that the money be used for its intended purpose is there as the bills can be paid directly. However, previously when someone received funds through Cassava remit and they wanted to cash them out, they were likely to get Bond notes. This is because payouts were done in Bond notes as it is legal tender in Zimbabwe rather than in USD which are harder to get by.
One couldn’t and still can’t use the EcoCash Rand wallet to get the funds they received in rands. This is because money sent from UK EcoCash app is not directly deposited into the Rand wallet of the receiver and that needs to happen for the receiver to cash out the funds in rands.
The branches that will guarantee payouts in USD are: First Street, Joina, Borrowdale, Hebert Chitepo, Chisipite, Livingstone, Avondale, Graniteside, Mutare, Bulawayo, Gweru and Masvingo. Please note that the cash out charge is the same as the charge for cashing out on EcoCash.
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8 comments
What about the most important thing….charges?
yes what are the charges?
Hi, we will let you know once we have the information.
Hi, the charges are the same that you would pay for when cashing out on EcoCash. I’ve updated the article with that information.
You’re talking about receiving, not sending.
Typically there’s a flat fee or commission above a certain threshold. Then there’s the exchange rate. All these impact the money sent and/,how much the actual receive amount is.
Are you saying if I send from the UK, the cash-in rate would apply? No, that wouldn’t sound right.
It is more useful to senders who would actually initiate the remittance, than it is to the receiver…even if they pay out in Forex.
For all we know, the commission could be prohibitively high.
Your information is still incomplete…you didn’t ask the right questions for an informed decision.
It would be nice to have at least published the announcement, or a link to it. Otherwise, the only “proof” I have of this is that I read it on Techzim.
Hi, if you visit the Cassava remit website, it is shown there. Link is included in the article at the start.
Econet showing how clever they are … NOT!!!!! They reduce the amount their cards can draw outside of Zim, but send USD notes to people who can happily trade with Bond Notes. Yeah right, that makes a lot of sense. Why not keep the ofrex outside Zim, and allow the debit cards to be more useful?