The minimum amount of ZESA tokens you can buy through EcoCash has been increased from $10 to $20.

EcoCash posted the message on their social media accounts:

Dear valued customer

Please note that ZETDC has set the minimum purchase amount of electricity tokens at ZW$20 for all service providers effective 18 October 2019. The minimum electricity token purchase on EcoCash has therefore been set at ZW$20.

Live Life the EcoCash Way

Update: NetOne has also sent out the same message;

Considering that tariffs have been increased on multiple occasions since the introduction of the $10 minimum charge from a year ago its not surprising that the minimum threshold has been increased.

Also read, ZESA Adds New Features To Online Portal

The post Update: ZESA Increases Minimum Amount Of Tokens You Can Buy On EcoCash & OneMoney appeared first on Techzim.

We’ve talked about Instant EcoCash before. It’s a brilliant application that allows users to ditch the EcoCash app which requires data and gives pretty extensive functionality.

Outside of all this existing functionality, Instant EcoCash is adding a new accessibility feature that will instantly make it more appealing to a wide number of users. The newest update of the application will add two local languages; Shona and Ndebele.

This will no doubt open it up to users who aren’t familiar with English which is the default language for many local apps.

This makes an already great app even better and hopefully, the Instant EcoCash team will get more downloads because of this.

Download Instant EcoCash app

The post Instant EcoCash App Adds Local Language Support appeared first on Techzim.

Recently a group of fraudsters in Victoria Falls was arrested for buying goods using fake EcoCash confirmation messages to fool retailers and buy alcohol.

It is the state’s case that Ngwenya was bragging about how he was able to buy goods using an edited Ecocash message and he taught his friends the trick. They tried it that day and bought beer worth $73 successfully. The others then went on a spree of defrauding shops using the same Modula Operandi until shop owners discovered that no money was being sent on these transactions and reported the case to the police.

Pindula

This is not an entirely new trick and its possible that fraudsters were simply using an app that allows them to generate fake messages. These apps allow users to specify message contents, the sender and time of sending making it easy to dupe unsuspecting retailers/merchants. The developers behind the apps advertise their applications as being great for pranks but unfortunately in countries such as ours where use of mobile money is prevalent – the apps have found a new and more sinister purpose.

Merchants should always make sure they receive confirmation of payment before giving customers any goods since once they have done so it will be very difficult to recover that money or trace who was responsible for the crime.

The post Fraudsters Using Fake EcoCash Messages To Fool Retailers appeared first on Techzim.

Several EcoCash agents had their lines closed yesterday as result of ongoing investigations by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, according to Zimpricecheck. EcoCash and RBZ have lately been trying to curb the trading of cash by EcoCash agents and one way of doing that is blocking some agent lines.

After closing the agent lines, Cassava reportedly sent the following messages to it’s agents:

Good day team.

Please note all the other lines that were owned by the agents who were barred in September have been blocked as well pending finalization of the investigations by RBZ. The lines were barred today 21 October 2019 under reference “Under investigation. Ref EcoCash Compliance. Will await RBZ to complete investigations and call them once we have received feedback from RBZ.

On behalf of compliance team

It seems like EcoCash and RBZ are working together more than ever to remove unscrupulous agents who are proping up the black market. It took a directive, an urgent application at the High Court and another directive to get these two entities to work together to monitor and control agents.

Also read: Fraudsters Using Fake EcoCash Messages To Fool Retailers

The post EcoCash Closes More Agent Lines appeared first on Techzim.

Back in 2011 when EcoCash was introduced, I don’t think any of us envisioned how ubiquitous the payments platform would become close to a decade later. In fact, our article covering the EcoCash launch 8 years ago only viewed the mobile money service as a peer to peer platform:

EcoCash will work almost exactly like Safaricom’s M-Pesa. Consumers will be able to deposit cash into their EcoCash accounts through registered agents. The money in the EcoCash account can be transferred to any mobile subscriber in Zimbabwe, regardless of the mobile network.

Recipients will simply need to visit a registered agent to redeem their cash. A big focus of the platform is bridging the rural-urban divide where remittances are concerned.

Whilst we acknowledged that merchants would accept EcoCash we didn’t gauge how impactful the platform would be. For a significant number of people (myself included) the mobile money platform is their first encounter with a financial service.

Considering how long EcoCash has been around for, we wondered if EcoCash is now better or at least more convenient than a regular bank. We’ll compare a number of scenarios/use cases and attempt to come up with a conclusion as to what’s better.

Ease of setting up…

First things first, how easy is it to get in the door for customers of either service?

Signing up for an EcoCash account is a fairly simple process –you just need to fill out a form at an Econet shop/agent, have an active SIM with any of the 3 MNOs and voila you’re done.

Opening a bank account, on the other hand, is more complex. First of all, for some banks, you have to be above 18 years of age and you’ll need more details which include current proof of residency, proof of income along with some passport-sized photos (in some cases).

The rigorous KYC process for opening a bank account is one of the main reasons why adoption of mobile money has been so widespread over the better part of the decade. The process of opening an EcoCash account is also much easier simply due to the fact that their agent system has far more reach than the bank’s branch networks.

More recently it’s become easier to open lite accounts with banks like Steward Bank which have less strenuous sign-up processes and have also adopted an agent system but in most cases setting up a mobile money account is easier than a bank account.

Swipe 0 – 1 EcoCash

Speed

You haven’t lived a full life if you haven’t heard the cliché “Time is money” and the question becomes what’s quicker, EcoCash or Swiping?

We performed 3 transactions with each payment method and averaged the time it took to complete transactions in a shop:

• Swiping took 19 seconds
• EcoCash took 54 seconds

If you’re impatient, you might as well ditch EcoCash and stick to your bank card. EcoCash transactions take so much time because of the multiple steps it takes to actually initiate and complete the transaction – from entering your number in the POS machine/ entering the merchant number > then amount and then waiting for the prompt to pop up on your phone. Swiping is much quicker because there are considerably fewer steps – i.e swiping the card and entering the pin.

OneMoney has eradicated this problem by allowing you to enter your number and then the pin directly into the POS machine, but unfortunately, that’s not widespread and will probably still be a slower than plain ol’ swipin’.

Swipe 1-1 EcoCash

Convenience

One of the factors that people love about EcoCash is the fact that it lives on a device you ALWAYS have with you – your mobile phone.

This makes it extremely convenient since it’s next to impossible to forget your phone as you would a bank card. Because most people have wallets/purses and are mandated to move around with their ID, the convenience doesn’t offer a night and day difference since you probably already move with your wallet – carrying a card won’t be irritating.

On days that you decide to move without the purse, however, you’ll still have your phone which means EcoCash is wherever you’re 9 out of 10 times. Heck, even if you’re going for a run you’re more likely to have your phone with you than you’re to have your wallet.

Swipe 1-1 EcoCash

Distribution & Reach

Mobile money takes this one with little to debate about. The 47 000 strong mobile money agent network outnumbers the 549 ATMs countrywide. Whilst the 20 000 merchants on the EcoCash platform are heavily outnumbered by the 107 067 POS machines – once you consider the number of POS machines you find in one shop and the fact that a lot of traders aren’t registered on EcoCash as merchants, it becomes clear just how much of an advantage EcoCash has in terms of reach and distribution.

For traders in certain areas, acquiring POS machines is expensive and the expense isn’t worth it since the people in these areas don’t have bank accounts.

One of the reasons mobile money is a revolutionary technology because the barrier of entry for both traders and buyers (and those using it for P2P) is incredibly low when compared to banks.

Swipe 1-2 EcoCash

Uptime

Whilst the Mid-Term Monetary Policy statement of 2019 makes mention of the uptime of financial of payment system – it doesn’t further break it down to show how the banking sector fared on its own vs mobile money.

In terms of operational reliability, the payment system in the country achieved an average uptime of over 95% during the period under review. The Bank continued to maintain a strong focus on ensuring the resilience of the payment system infrastructure against cyber threats.

What’s become clear however is that due to the fact that people who have bank accounts are fragmented across 13+ banking institutions any downtime suffered by individual banks will be much less impactful than the effect of EcoCash downtime. Because of EcoCash’s monopoly on the mobile money market – downtime basically brings the nation to a halt which isn’t the case with any banking institution in isolation.

Swipe 2-2 EcoCash

Charges

One of the most important aspects of this debate is charges. Simply put, Zimbabweans care about how much they are being charged to transact.

We recently took a look at charges in the banking sector and here’s a table with those charges:

How do these charges compare to EcoCash? Well, it’s a hard comparison to make for a number of reasons including the fact that it’s a comparison between one mobile money institution vs 14 commercial banks which have different charges.

Another problem with this comparison is that because of the aforementioned reach and distribution of mobile money there are some cases where even if your bank is the cheaper option, it simply might not exist in certain areas which negate the advantage of being cheaper. For instance, the social norm is simply that if you want to perform a P2P transaction to someone in the rural areas you use EcoCash. In such situations it will not matter if banks are cheaper because i) there are no POS machines in many of these areas and ii) there are no ATMs to withdraw making a bank account an afterthought to the people in these areas.

Finally, another aspect that makes comparing charges between the two mediums difficult is the current lay of the land when it comes to charges for withdrawing/cashing out.

Withdrawing money from local banks is one of the best patience building exercises known to man. There’s uncertainty on just how much you’ll withdraw and because of the time it takes to withdraw citizens have all but given up when it comes to withdrawing from the banks.

If you don’t live in Zimbabwe, you would assume that this means cashing out through EcoCash is a clear winner – and whilst there are no queues or uncertainty over amounts you can withdraw, there is a different kind of devil you have to contend with. EcoCash agents understand that money is scarce and have begun selling money to whoever is interested in cashing out. The cash out premium has gone as high as 60% negating the convenience of avoiding bank queues and withdrawal limits.

In terms of charges, none of the two offers a better deal and I would call this a draw…

Swipe 2-2 EcoCash

So what’s actually better?

Well, as with most things, it’s really contextual and depends on what you need from your financial service provider. If the ability to perform P2P transactions, and easily set up an account is important to you EcoCash offers more. But if speed of transacting and fewer downtime issues are more important than that bank card will offer you a better experience.

As most of us will know, a hybrid (or having both) is actually the best setup because both banks and mobile money have pros and cons which make them integral to most of our lives and ditching one exclusively for the other will definitely mean missing out…

The post EcoCash Vs Swiping: What’s Superior? appeared first on Techzim.

We sat down with VISA’s General Manager for Southern Africa Mr. Jabu Basopo. We had an interesting conversation that touched on a variety of issues including improving the security of payments, implementation of QR codes in African markets and the lessons that VISA is learning from African payments which one can argue are beginning to leapfrog Western societies due to the focus on mobile technologies.

Techzim (Tz): I’m sure you’re aware that here in Zimbabwe we’ve had two failed attempts to launch QR payments, once by Ecobank and once by EcoCash. I want to understand what you think would be necessary to actually launch QR and get traction?

Jabu Basopo (JB): In the case of Ecobank and the launch of their QR solution, they were launching the Masterpass (a Mastercard solution), so it’s very important that we differentiate the two.

I think what happened when QR codes came into play is that someone came up with this technology and everybody in the industry was excited by QR and deployed solutions that were far from ideal. From a VISA perspective, this is where we can play a role in improving this technology because we can take these technologies and make sure we develop the right technology that talks to everybody – i.e that is interoperable.

When you started to see QR codes popping up in the market they were not talking to each other. They were very silo-focused which is a challenge in payments. Payments must have certain standards and interoperability is always key.

When you look at QR codes, scalability is very important. If you’re going to have only 10 people using QR it won’t translate into a common payment.

At VISA these are the things we are thinking about, with a particular focus on how to go to market and ensuring that consumers understand.

We are actually working with banks to make a form of payment that covers all the bases – be it QR, contactless right down to USSD and this payment form will be interoperable. If Techzim comes in and says we want to process payments it will simply be a matter of plugging into the API and you can process.

Tz: Interesting. From Visa’s perspective do you think QR payments in Africa will be rolled out successfully in the short term or it’s more of a medium to long-term technology

JB: I think if you look at African markets we tend to complain and say “we have x and y services from the west which are just brought to us”. Mobile is OUR product. It’s a product we pioneered for Africa but we just need to do it right.

In fact, the developed countries are now looking at us and saying ” These guys initiated a mobile product”, but they are now perfecting it better than us.

QR is a product made for African markets and solves a lot of problems and I have no doubts that it is an immediate need. It just needs to be implemented in the right way.

Tz: Visa is constantly working on new technologies and I’m excited to know which new products you’re working – specifically for the African market

JB: I would like to discuss this one under the umbrella of “digital” because this is where we are seeing everyone going including Zim.

We are seeing huge growth in eCommerce transactions coming predominantly from mobile. The consumer is clearly sending a message that this is the form of payment that I want to use. So now our role is to make sure that all payments conform to mobile devices. Regardless of someone having a feature phone or a smartphone – it has to work.

Deploying mobile technologies such as USSD, contactless and dealing with challenges to do with fraud and security in eCommerce is the major focus right now.

In terms of fraud and security in the eCommerce space, consumers are worried and fearful. And in looking at how to deal with these fears, we came up with Tokenization.

We are tokenizing transactions which ensures that when I transact I’m only exposing my card details to that specific transaction. What happens is as I transact a token is generated in the background and that’s what is sent. If someone steals that they are exposed to just that single transaction. You’re not exposing your whole credentials. This is a great technology especially for the growth of eCommerce.

Tz: The security aspect is incredibly important in Zim as well and when you spoke of Tokenization I got extremely excited because there’ve been too many fraud incidents involving the digital payments. Can our local banks partner with Visa and use this technology to protect Zimbabweans?

JB: We have these services available to our clients, and the banks here are our clients already so they can use this technology. It’s a matter of making their environment ready and making some changes in order to make their environment compatible with the technology.

Tz: When some people look at Visa & Mastercard trying to solve payment related problems in Africa there’s a perception that you guys will struggle to make products for the African market because people believe you’re a western company. My question would then be is this true and what have you learned from Africa (which is in some aspects ahead of developed markets)?

JB: I think what needs to be understood is the fact that Visa and Mastercard might appear “Western” and yes our head offices are there but this is the reason why when we expand into markets we have local people running these organizations. I’m from here (Jabu is Zimbabwean), I know this market and that’s how we look at it. Ultimately there’s no difference and we approach it from the perspective of simply taking a global company and operate it locally and leverage on our brand, and the scale we have when it comes to systems, technologies, and expertise. That’s the big advantage when we localize.

I think the most important thing for us is really understanding the products that we’re launching and whether or not they match what is required by the consumers. Even if you look at the way MNOs have been implementing their technologies there are too many closed loops and questions around how that can be opened up.

The unfortunate thing when it comes to perception is that people only look at domestic payments. I’ll give an example of this country. The challenges we have here are now seeing us survive on tourism. Zimbabwe was 4th in terms of tourists received in Africa last year. The people coming in here need to make payments and the local solutions aren’t great at that. That’s where we add value.

In our trends we see travel becoming the norm and if the people coming from outside Zimbabwe can access payment systems easily the numbers will increase which can only be a good thing.

We need to think global and act locally…

Tz: What has been the biggest challenge thus far in terms of making payments as seamless as possible

It’s interoperability. Basically. I say this because you have all these different payment forms which don’t talk to each other. I go into a certain shop I have to use one method of payment. I go into another one and its a different form of payment etc.

Interoperability is key to all this communication and once you nail that you can begin to start addressing other things such as speed and security. A good example is 3 weeks ago we implemented Tap to pay with Gautrain in South Africa. So now if you jump off a flight at OR Tambo and you’re catching a train, the same Visa card you use in other countries can now pay for your train ride. You just tap and go instead of having to queue for tickets.

Tz: One of the biggest challenges in Africa is banks and merchants having the capital to roll out infrastructure for new payment technologies and products. You were talking about contactless and the Gautrain. How does the technology become low-cost to the point where the incentive to scale it is higher for banks and merchants?

JB: We do understand that different countries experience different challenges. But at the end of the day if we continue to focus on costs then we’re not going to do anything.

At some point, a certain level of investment is required and you’ll have to make that decision regardless of the prevailing conditions in the market.

Another way of looking at investment is simple: sometimes the things that we do today might not benefit us today but they create the foundation which will benefit us in 5-10 years. In markets like this its always good to think long term than to think short term.

You might not do everything at once but is it in your plan to begin with? If you’re always in the “cost-mode” it’s going to limit your expansion

Tz: Finally, what do payments look like to you in 5-10 years?

I think this what I spoke about earlier. From the Zimbabwe context its a payment space where I should be able to walk in any shop and be able to pay with any form of payment I have.

In 5-10 years we want to see Visa credentials – be it plastic, the phone, wearables- being the best way to pay everywhere and for everyone. That’s where we see the country going.

The post [Interview] We Chat With Visa’s GM for Southern Africa: “We Need To Think Global & Act Local” When Deploying Payment Technologies appeared first on Techzim.

Your worst nightmare is happening this weekend. EcoCash has issued a statement telling people that its service won’t be available for 24 hours, from 9pm on Saturday the 16th of November to 9pm on Sunday the 17th because of a planned system maintenance. Here’s the statement from EcoCash:

Given that EcoCash is used by at least 6 million users, this planned system maintenance will affect the bulk of e-commerce and payments countrywide.

The post Alert! You Won’t Be Able To Use EcoCash For 24 Hours This Weekend appeared first on Techzim.

Yesterday, we broke the news that EcoCash won’t be available for 24 hours this coming weekend. According to EcoCash’s spokesperson, the weekend’s planned system upgrade marks the culmination of months of system maintenance. That maybe explains the intermittent and sporadic service outages the platform has been experiencing lately.

The EcoCash system upgrade, for which critical work has been going on over the past several months, will commence on Saturday evening, and is scheduled to be completed on Sunday evening.

We kindly urge our customers to make all their critical transactions before the upgrade, to avoid the inconvenience of falling to transact during the upgrade period on Saturday night and on Sunday. We sincerely regret any inconvenience the upgrade downtime will cause to our valued customers.

EcoCash spokesperson

The worsening cash shortages has increased the use of EcoCash so the system upgrade is meant to optimize the platform so that it processes more transactions efficiently. EcoCash claims that the upgrade will not only will increase the capacity of the platform but also enable it to offer more automated self-care services such as reversing a transaction through the *150# USSD code.

The post Critical Work For System Upgrade Has Been Happening For The Past Several Months Says EcoCash appeared first on Techzim.

As we all know, EcoCash was undergoing 24-hour maintenance from Saturday 9 PM (it ended up stretching to this morning).

When EcoCash started working again last night a number of people who use the mobile money platform complained that the upgrade wasn’t good enough since the option to buy airtime was absent at the time.

The option is now available and the simple explanation given was that the upgrade wasn’t complete when the platform came back online. This didn’t stop a number of people from criticising EcoCash at the time:

The post EcoCash Subscribers Panic After Absence Of Option To Buy Airtime appeared first on Techzim.

Since coming back online last night around 9 PM as promised, EcoCash has been a hot mess, with intermittent service being the order of the day for users of the mobile money platform.

Initially, there was some confusion regarding the functionality to buy airtime via EcoCash which seemed to no longer be available last night. These rumours were dispelled by Cassava Smartech’s social media team which alerted customers that the upgrades were in fact still underway despite the fact that users could now access EcoCash.

This morning however EcoCash sent out the following message to subscribers:

Please be advised that the EcoCash system upgrade has been completed succesfully.

All EcoCash services are restored. Live Life the EcoCash Way.

Upon receipt of such a message, one would think things are A-Okay but that’s not really the case and at the time of writing some users are getting a “system busy error message” when they try to access the app. Others have also reported that accessing the platform has been extremely slow whilst some are saying the option to buy airtime has disappeared once again.

It seems like the system maintenance is still ongoing or there was a glitch due to the upgrades carried out and unfortunately for both consumers and developers at EcoCash, there is a bit of a crisis.

The post EcoCash System Challenges Persist Despite Service Being Restored appeared first on Techzim.

Amid EcoCash’s intermittent service disruptions, some people have decided to make people panic by cooking up doomsday warnings.

EcoCash has dismissed a circulating message that is saying the Ecocash service and other mobile moner services will be closed down on 1 December, 2019. The message goes on to say that EcoCash users have to empty their wallets into bank accounts. Here’s the warning from EcoCash:

The post EcoCash Is Not Closing Down, Says EcoCash As It Dismisses Fake News appeared first on Techzim.

The infamous EcoCash upgrade which has been labelled by many as a downgrade due to the inconvenience caused by extended downtimes has been met with hostility because of its failure to work. We decided to scroll through the “new EcoCash” for ourselves and see if there are new features that have been added.

The EcoCash app has added security

Prior to the upgrade if you logged into the EcoCash application once it would allow you to access the EcoCash menu without entering a password for months. In fact, you would only enter your password before going in-app when you get that prompt to change your EcoCash password.

Now the application requires that you enter your password every time you open the application, making it similar to most banking apps which have a similar requirement.

New navigation options

After years of having to restart USSD based transactions whenever you made a mistake, EcoCash now has additional navigation options which are meant to make mistakes less punishing for users. * and 0 will now take users to the main menu and the previous menu respectively.

Pending transactions

You may have noticed the new view pending transactions option which is now on the EcoCash menu. At the time of writing, we are not yet sure how exactly this feature will work and attempts to get the information from EcoCash representatives have been futile.

These are the visible changes and the assumption would be that there are more significant changes that have been made in the background because in isolation these 3 don’t seem to be worth the amount of trouble that has befallen EcoCash over the last few days.

The post Here Are Some Of The New Features On EcoCash appeared first on Techzim.

It appears the minimum airtime purchase you can make on EcoCash might be getting a 150% increase from $2 to $5. That’s currently the message popping up when users try to buy airtime for anything less than $5:

There is a bit of confusion on whether these are permanent changes or if they are tied to the fact EcoCash has been going through serious problems and we couldn’t reach EcoCash representatives at the time of going to press.

What further puts this in doubt is that in the morning a similar error was popping up but with the minimum being $3.

In the event that the changes are permanent, you’ll still be able to buy airtime for a $1 using Techzim’s airtime bot on WhatsApp (0718049280). The bot is currently not processing airtime orders because of the EcoCash outage but once the EcoCash outage is over.

The post EcoCash Minimum Airtime Purchase Increased appeared first on Techzim.

What started out as an EcoCash system upgrade this past weekend quickly turned into the equivalent of a horror show for many local businesses which simply couldn’t process transactions on the most widespread payment platform in the country.

We wondered just how impactful this disruption was and reached out to a number of startups to enquire on how much potential revenue they lost out on due to EcoCash’s downtime:

Of the startups, we reached out to Fresh In A Box was the biggest loser, losing out on 160 sales worth ZW$77 930 in total. They tracked these potential sales through Longrocket which also allows them to monitor the last stage of a customers transaction.

Thumeza a Bulawayo-based logistics startup lost $2 000 this week and the Founder and CEO – Gugulethu Siso stressed how much of a hold EcoCash has a hold on the market especially the unbanked.

Other startups did not disclose an exact figure of how much they lost but Mobisoft development team behind some of the most popular local apps like EcoLedger lost out on 25% of expected revenue during the time the mobile money platform was down.

Housing Hub the accommodation startup said they anticipated this would be one of the busiest weeks of the year with the MSU graduation coming. However, they missed out on some orders and had to use roundabout methods to complete transactions with customers who were patient enough:

This has brought business to a standstill. Each time we have to request for an EcoCash account statement to verify transactions because our merchants aren’t reflecting notifications to prove that people have sent money.

We have to request these statements every 30 minutes to verify payments before we can accept anyone.

Marvellous Nyongoro – CEO & Founder of The Housing Hub

Requesting EcoCash statements comes at a cost. Not only did the Housing Hub lose potential revenue from customers who couldn’t convert, but they also had lower margins on the customers that did…

There are a few startups who we talked to who confirmed that they didn’t really feel scathed by this outage and it seems those are not entirely dependant on EcoCash. Musungo who complete most transactions with a cash-on-collection model said around 90% of their orders are fulfilled in cash and thus they haven’t really been affected by the EcoCash outage. In fact, they said things like internet instability affect them far more than the recent crisis.

Animation Studio Alula also has a similar perspective to Musungo and it seems for businesses that can avoid EcoCash (very few of them exist) or don’t primarily rely on it there wasn’t much of a discernible impact.

One metric that might be harder to measure is the momentum and potential growth that startups, in general, have missed out on during the downtime. Most startups rely on EcoCash to make money and when the service is down for 4-5 days businesses are losing out on new and old customers who could’ve increased revenue.

Post-crisis, it will be interesting to see if startups/businesses and Zimbos start looking for alternatives to EcoCash in order to protect themselves from such an incident or if the hassle of moving to a different service will mean the mobile money market share continues to be monopolised by one player…

The post How Does An EcoCash Outage Affect Local Startups? appeared first on Techzim.

Even though yesterday EcoCash sent out messages to its subscribers telling them that service has been fully restored, it looks like things are not flowing quite well in the entire EcoCash ecosystem. The largest mobile money platform has sent messages to its customers telling them that its EcoCash app is not yet up to scratch for use.

So instead of using the app, EcoCash is advising users to the *151# USSD code. Here’s the message from EcoCash

Please be advised that we are working to stabilize your EcoCash App & will advise when stable. We apologize for the inconvenience. Kindly Dial *151# to transact.

People often use the EcoCash app as it is less tedious to make payments with as compared to the USSD platform where one has to respond to several prompts to complete a payment. In addition, the app is zero-rated which gives users another compelling reason to use it for payments rather than the USSD platform.

The post EcoCash Says Its App Is Not Yet Stable, So Use *151# At The Moment appeared first on Techzim.

OneMoney is pouncing on the chaotic fortnight that EcoCash has had. What initially seemed like a passive attempt at winning over market share with media poster has turned into a full-on assault with OneMoney’s latest promotion.

From now until 31 December 2019, transacting via OneMoney will be free of charge. The mobile money platform has 0 rated all transaction charges (outside of the 2% tax) including purchasing in shops, buying airtime via OneMoney and sending money to other mobile money users will all come with no extra cost.

In addition to that, OneMoney has also come up with two further incentives to entice people to join:

• 1GB of free data for customers who fund their mobile money wallets with $500
• 50% discount if you use OneMoney to buy airtime.

NetOne’s CEO Mr Lazarus Muchenje emphasises that this move was more about supporting Zimbabweans at a critical time than it is about leapfrogging the competition but it’s hard to take him at his word when he also previously said that OneMoney had a target to overtake EcoCash in the within two years time.

People must not pay to get these services. It should be free.

NetOne CEO Lazarus Muchenje speaking at the launch of the promotion

This combination of perks is pretty aggressive and if I had to guess I would say this will attract a number of users onto the platform at a time when the biggest mobile money player has been at its most inefficient causing businesses and citizens alike a lot of problems.

The post Transacting Using OneMoney Will Be Free Until The End Of 2019 appeared first on Techzim.

EcoCash continues to battle with arguably its worst crash and whilst the service is back up, it’s certainly not business as usual. With that being said the mobile money service is now working on clearing customer queries.

I’m pleased to say that transactions on our new EcoCash platform are now going through normally.

We are however currently seized with clearing a backlog of transactions particularly those arising from third-party integrations, and continue to ask for our customers’ patience as we work to clear this last hurdle.

Eddie Chibi – EcoCash CEO

It seems after this is done, shops will be taking EcoCash once again as it has been hit or miss with some merchants accepting EcoCash whilst others continue to avoid the mobile money service like the plague.

Over the last few hours it also seemed some users who had their EcoCash accounts blocked due to faults are now regaining access to their accounts. Subscribers have been receiving messages that read, “Please be advised that your EcoCash wallet has been unblocked. You are now able to transact on EcoCash.”

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UX stands for user experience- just in case.

Almost two weeks ago EcoCash warned users that the platform would go offline for 24 hours over the weekend. They said this was to make the system better yada yada yada.

Besides the fact that things did not go too well, EcoCash introduced some new user experience features. In doing this there is one thing that they really botched up (maybe there are other things but this stood out): merchant payments. It’s disappointing because the mobile money company had made the process of paying in a supermarket using mobile money quite smooth.

The smooth process

Initially one had to go through a cumbersome USSD menu to pay for goods at the till. Then USSD long codes came along which allowed you to input all those steps at once and then just enter your PIN. EcoCash innovated further and integrated with merchants particularly big supermarkets.

The integration allowed shoppers to just enter their EcoCash number into a POS machine and the next thing they do is to just confirm the payment they would be making by entering their PIN onto a POP up on their EcoCash phone. It worked, simple!

NetOne’s OneMoney made things even simpler

In selected shops EcoCash rival OneMoney has made it possible for subscribers to pay without needing to whip out their phone from the pocket. They can enter their OneMoney number and PIN directly on the POS. In a supermarket situation, every half second counts! Well done OneMoney.

EcoCash moves 5 steps backwards

Now, if you go into a supermarket and you want to pay, the bigger chance is that the integration with EcoCash is not working at all. They have been struggling with this for close to two weeks now.

If the integration is working, you will input your EcoCash number into the POS as usual and of course you will look at your EcoCash phone to confirm by entering your PIN. Now you’ll be greeted with this:

Enter PIN to start? What do you mean start? If you just say “Ah well, let me just enter the PIN, you then get this message:

In the smooth process this information was in just one pop up that said hey you are paying so much to such and such merchant, enter your PIN to confirm. The PIN itself is the authentication. Why on earth is there a second step??

Well if you enter 1 to confirm this is what greets you:

The blared out stuff is just my name and the merchant I was paying. It so happened that the merchant I was paying needed the transaction ID for their record. The ID is not even shown in that summary screen above. It just says “n Next.” I had to wait for the SMS summary to come so I could retrieve the transaction ID. That information used to be in the confirmation under the smooth process.

Long codes were not spared

So, the screen shots I was sharing above are actually on using a pay merchant USSD long code (you know the *151*2*2… type thing). I just used them to explain how the direct merchant integration is working because they are working exactly the same. So you can’t escape this time consuming and ambiguous UX by using long codes, it’s the same medicine boss.

I thought long codes were not working the first time I saw the screenshot below after punching in a long code:

Yesterday, I heard my sister in law telling someone that EcoCash long codes were not working anymore. Why? Every time she punched in one of those she would be told to enter her PIN to start. I am sure there are a number of drops midway through transactions. I sure dropped a few when I thought I couldn’t long code.

Besides the drops, EcoCash is determined to make our supermarket experiences more dreadful than they are already. Perfect timing: holiday season is upon us, the queues will just get longer! If they are not careful, retailers will just put up signs that say “No EcoCash.” The strong network effects that have kept EcoCash ahead will start to unravel at that point and it will be “Hello OneMoney.”

No it’s not about security

I spoke to four EcoCash people about this and they all tried to sell me some line about this being for security. I refused to accept that and all four of them quickly admitted that there was no added security given by the extra steps whatsoever. It’s like waking up one day and banks are now saying you have to swipe your card 3 times before you enter your PIN for extra security. Come on!

Final note

Product development must not be led by engineers who have no idea how users use the product. Geeks that shop online should not be ultimately responsible for supermarket experiences. Well, even the online merchant payments are just as terrible now on EcoCash. So maybe it’s not the geeks that did this.

By the way, long codes even for peer to peer sending of money are now working like this. I know a number of people abandoned transactions when they were told to start mid way through… It’s not working, simple!

The post New EcoCash Merchant Payment UX Is Terrible appeared first on Techzim.

On this episode of the Techzim podcast, we have a discussion on the EcoCash system upgrade that turned into an outage. Some of the questions on our minds were:

• Do these things happen?
• What could they have done better?
• The new features, how are they?
• Isn’t Zimbabwe too vulnerable to Ecocash?

You can listen on the following podcast platforms: Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts and Apple Podcasts or on YouTube (video below).

The post Podcast On The EcoCash Outage appeared first on Techzim.

OneMoney announced their festive promotion earlier this week and in addition to transacting for free until the end of the year, there’s also a 1GB data incentive for those willing to move their funds from their bank to their OneMoney wallet.

You may have been wondering how to move your money from your bank to your OneMoney wallet and vice-versa if you’re going to be making the switch this month:

To move money from your bank account to your OneMoney wallet follow these steps:

1.Open & Log into your bank’s application or dial USSD code

2.Select OneMoney on the ZIPIT banks list

3.Enter destination account number (as 263712 980 ###)

4.Enter receiving mobile number (0712 980 ###)

5.Specify the purpose of transfer – e.g. rental

6.Enter Amount to be transferred

7.Confirm the transfer amount

To move funds from your wallet to your bank there are fewer steps:

1.Dial *111# & Select Options 5- Banking Services

2.Select option 5 – ZIPIT3.Choose destination bank

4.Enter bank account number

5.Enter Amount to be transferred

6.Enter PIN to confirm

Whilst wallet to bank transfers are free because of the use of ZIPIT mobile money subscribers will incur the 2% tax along with a 1% Zimswitch charge. NetOne, however, isn’t charging anything with all the fees being part of tax or mandatory charges from the service provider.

The post How To Move Money From Your Bank To Your OneMoney Wallet appeared first on Techzim.