EcoCash to reduce tariffs

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ECOCASH plans to further reduce its tariffs soon, the mobile money service’s chief executive officer Natalie Jabangwe-Morris has revealed.
Speaking at the launch of EcoCash’s dedicated business wallet in Harare last week, Jabangwe-Morris said the mobile money service was planning to slash its tariffs again this year before the elections which are scheduled for July 30.
“As EcoCash, over the last few years we have been reducing our tariffs every single year, this year again I will confirm to you that we will be reducing our tariffs, hopefully we will deal with this before the elections,” She said.
EcoCash has over the past few years slashed its tariffs more than once but its fees remain above those of its competitors, OneMoney and Telecash.
Financial transaction fees in Zimbabwe have also generally been high when compared to fees charged globally; this is particularly true for mobile money solutions which have taken a place of prominence in the country’s financial system as the economy faces cash shortages.
The pain caused by the high transaction fees is compounded by the premiums charged on informal trades for electronic payments, particularly mobile money payments.
EcoCash has maintained control of the mobile money market even though its charges are the highest in that space. As of December 2017, EcoCash commanded 97 percent of the mobile money market, by subscriber numbers. NetOne’s OneMoney, which has the lowest tariffs in the business, however, seems to be making up some ground on EcoCash.
OneMoney claims that its subscriber base has now reached more than a million from 52 940 in December last year.
In a bid for a bigger stake in the local mobile money business, NetOne last year started from scratch as it rebuilt its mobile money service on newly acquired infrastructure which it says offers better technology as it rebranded from OneWallet to OneMoney.
The “new and improved” OneMoney came with a Zimswitch enabled debit card; it is also integrated to Zimswitch Instant Payment Interchange Technology or ZIPIT.
Jabangwe-Morris said EcoCash’s business wallet, which represents the first time in Africa that an enterprise transactions service has been integrated onto a mobile money platform, will come with very reasonable fees.
“This product will be extremely affordable if you consider that we are dealing with high level transactions,” she said.
EcoCash says the new wallet will offer merchants, agents, payroll wallet holders and billers full control of their funds by affording them the ability to make and receive payments directly on their business wallet.
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