If you go to the Google Play Store and search for CashBot you’ll be met with a pretty humble description that doesn’t fully explain the impact of this application. The store description reads:
The CashBot app allows you to save money when transacting on Mobile Money in Zimbabwe.
Our algorithms find the optimum amounts you have to send to pay the least charges.
This app will also initiate and complete all the transactions for you automatically.
Why manually transact when you can automate everything with CashBot! (And save money doing so)
CashBot Google Play
Happy Saving 🙂
How does the app work? It uses algorithms to find the optimum amounts you have to send to pay the least charges. CashBot will then automatically initiate and complete all the transactions for you.
The average person in Zimbabwe does between 10 to 20 Mobile Money transactions per day. Using our app, users can pay $1 to $3 less in charges per transaction.
Without our app, if one does ten transactions per day for 30 days, they will pay $300 or more in charges than they could and should have.
Gedion Moyo – Mobisoft CEO
To take a crude example, instead of sending say $38, the app will send $19 twice. While sending $38 should have cost you $2.21 (1.45 (EcoCash) + 0.76 (tax)), sending $19 twice costs $1.34( total), you would have saved $0.87 by sending $19 twice instead of $38, which is a 40% saving on the charges already ( $0.87 / $2.21). Pretty nifty.
Apart from just sending money, CashBot users can also pay merchants and cash out making the application useful in more than one scenario.
When you consider that EcoCash charges have been reviewed upwards thrice since the back end of 2018, what was once a beacon for financial inclusion has become prohibitively expensive and solutions that can ease that burden are always welcome.
