You can now pay for Ethiopian Airlines tickets using EcoCash or Telecash

Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest airline group, recently partnered with Flocash, a provider of electronic payment services, to enable online mobile payments on Ethiopian Airlines website. You will now be able to pay for airplane tickets from the airline using EcoCash or Telecash. To pay using this payment method, got to their website and start the booking process.

Once you have filled in all the necessary information about the flight you’d want, you will then be present with different payment options and you can select either EcoCash or Telecash from the mobile payment options. In the example of EcoCash, once you select it and enter your mobile number and details, a USSD popup will come to your phone and you’ll have to enter your pin to make the payment.

After you’ve entered the pin and made the payment, the electronic version of your ticket will then be sent to your email. Most airlines these days now have your details in their system before you’ve arrived for check-in at the airport so you might just have to produce your passport and they will scan the passport and verify that you do have a booking.

Alternatively, you can print the ticket and go with it but it might not be necessary for you to do that. The integration of mobile payments as a payment option for Ethiopian Airlines tickets will surely bring convenience to some people. Even though you could make payments using RTGS, mobile money platforms generally process transactions much faster so you won’t have to wait that often and they rarely fail, unlike RTGS.

Other than saving time due to quicker processing and fewer steps to take, more options are always a good thing. A close of friend of mine doesn’t have a bank account but he recently flew to Cape Town. If this had been around then, I’m sure he’d have appreciated it greatly as he could have just used his EcoCash instead of running around looking for a way to pay for the ticket.

Given how many people use these mobile money platforms especially EcoCash, this could help Ethiopian Airlines capture the market of people who fly frequently but just use the mobile money platforms for transacting. For the mobile payment solutions, EcoCash and Telecash, it means that their platform will now be used for making more transactions and could potentially get them to be used outside of Zimbabwe.

Let us know what you think about this recent development that Ethiopian Airlines has brought to their website. Would you use it instead of RTGS? Have you bought airplane tickets online? What was your experience? What would you like to be made more convenient when it comes to buying airplane tickets online?