EcoCash & OneMoney grew in Q4 2020 while Telecash crashed

Despite the mobile money restrictions which were a feature of the second half of 2020 (till present date), EcoCash and OneMoney grew in Q4 2020. Overall mobile money subscriptions increased by 2.7 % from 6 325 666 subscribers in Q3 to 6 495 682 at the end of the year according to the POTRAZ Q4 2020 report.

Individually, OneMoney was the biggest mover with a 9.6% increase in subscriptions. EcoCash followed far behind with a marginal gain of 1.9% while Telecash lost 72.8%!

OneMoney’s ascent makes sense since the RBZ mandated that individuals can only have one mobile money wallet per MMO. EcoCash being the biggest was always going to suffer as many people were looking for a second mobile money wallet.

The “one mobile money wallet directive” was something that we thought would help Telecash. But it appears the market doesn’t have any confidence in the mobile money operator. Telecash was the only MMO to not show any growth in Q4 2020 and the trend follows what we have been seeing over the years.

Mobile money market share

OneMoney has been on the up of late and it continued to eat into EcoCash and Telecash’s market share.

As the chart above shows OneMoney made up 0.9% of the mobile money market share that was leeched by EcoCash and Telecash. As impressive as this may be for OneMoney, it is still miles behind when it comes to the value of transactions.

Number and value of mobile money transactions Q4 2020

Having the largest mobile money market share EcoCash, as expected, dominated both in value of transactions and number of transactions.

In this category, OneMoney only made gains in the number of transactions, with a 0.27% increase from Q3. In the value of transactions however OneMoney was the only MMO to regress with -0.06% from 4.16% in Q3 2020 to 4.10% in Q4 2020.

EcoCash is still the biggest player and even though the number of transactions slumped by 0.28%. The mobile money operator improved in the value of transactions with a 0.04% increase.