So it appears that EcoCashSave has been shut down by Cassava Smartech. The option for EcoCashSave no longer appears on the USSD menu and it seems to have been replaced by the relaunched KaShagi microloans.
To all those who might not know or may have forgotten. EcoCashSave was a way for EcoCash customers to put a little bit away every month “towards your dreams anytime, anywhere”. The service, in its early days, had some heavy backing by the way of the Waya Waya promotion back in 2013. Econet Wireless was running the promotion (before the Cassava Econet split) and it had prizes amounting to $400k.
2013 was forever ago and as with all things people move on and it seems Cassava has too. However, the shut down of EcoCashSave happened with no announcement. This is a little worrying if there were a collection of people who were using it to store their savings.
The question now is, is there a way for people to withdraw that money they had squirrelled away? To find out more, we reached out to Cassava Smartech but unfortunately, we haven’t yet gotten a response.
It should be said that this move makes sense on Cassava’s end of things. There is no need to keep the service running if only a handful of people are using it. The only reservation we have is that there may have been some diehards who relied on it.
EcoCashSave’s unceremonious disappearance from the USSD is concerning no matter the number of people who used the service.
One response
The sad thing about these saving services is that if someone put in $100 USD in 2013 and comes back now, they will get $100 ZWL. Monetary policy aside, no decent effort is made to protect the value of a person’s money.
This also applies to banks, who seem to be thriving whilst depositors get nothing.
It’s a raw deal, you get nothing when the business is booming, but when poor investment decisions are made, you stand to lose everything.