EcoCash has processed over $23 billion since launch and that’s not the only impressive figure

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe shared the impressive feat in its recently published annual report.

EcoCash has truly taken the country by storm since its launch in 2011. You might recall that they were not the first mobile money solution in Zimbabwe but like Apple did with the iPhone, they did it better than the forerunners.

Today, EcoCash commands a hefty 99.8% of the mobile money market share. It’s as good as a one horse race at this point. That 99.8% as presented in their annual report suggests that they have grown their market share since Q2. In the POTRAZ Q2 report, their market share was pegged at 97.98%.

They managed to grab such a market share because frankly, their service is superior to that of the competition. They launched Ecocash Diaspora in collaboration with Mahindra Comviva and that service won them the IoT Product / Service of the year at AfricaCom 2017 yesterday.

It is that dominance which has allowed EcoCash to process over $23 billion in just about 6 years. Contrast this with the national GDP which stood at $16.29 billion in 2016. In recent years there must have been exponential growth because EcoCash’s transaction values account for about 53% of Zimbabwe GDP now.

At 6.7 million subscribers EcoCash has 4.7 million more than banks have. That 6.7 million figure represents 80% of the adult population in this country or 52% of the whole population.

For Econet Wireless this growth in EcoCash revenues is important as the company prepares for life after voice. As you might know voice revenue has been falling for years now. EcoCash and data revenue is increasingly becoming important to the company’s bottom line.

EcoCash revenue now accounts for 12% of Econet’s revenues. Combined with data revenue, they combine for 32% of the group’s revenues, up from 13% back in 2014.

As Econet shows they are moving from reliance on voice revenue one wonders how the other MNOs in this country are going to cope. Over at NetOne and Telecel it is not apparent how they will survive given the steady decline of voice revenue. They still depend on voice revenue heavily. Given how NetOne has never posted a profit in its entire existence I guess the government is not worried about falling voice revenue.