The rise of mobile money in Zimbabwe has proved very popular over the years, as financial institutions and telecoms have come up with different packages, fundamentally changing the way people do business to pay for goods and services using cell phones.
Some of the products that have brought convenience to the market include Textacash (CABS), Mobile Banking (CBZ Bank), OneWallet (NetOne), GetCash Wallet (GetCash), TeleCash (Telecel), Mobile Moola (FBC). Others are now defunct after the collapse of their parent institutions and these include CellCard (Kingdom Bank), Cybercash (Interfin Bank) and eMali (Tetrad).
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To date, as was also evidenced in the recently released POTRAZ Q2 report of 2017, EcoCash has a mega 97.98% market share, cementing themselves as the dominant player of mobile money in Zimbabwe. EcoCash has become the leading digital payments service in Zimbabwe with over 3,2 million subscribers, more than 23 000 agents and has transacted over US$16 billion in the last four years. This is a huge achievement for a platform that has been in existence for only just over five years.
The launch of EcoCash in 2011 was a game changer and a welcome development for our country as it eliminated the need for cash by enabling digital payments using a mobile wallet. To realize ‘cashless-Zimbabwe’ vision, EcoCash “broke-the-cash-cycle” approach aimed at digitizing all cash transactions.
Similarly holding 93.79% of the agent network in Zimbabwe one can postulate that of the over $835 million mobile money payments transacted between the months of April – June 2017 EcoCash would have undoubtedly handled a large portion of that.
The tables below give a snapshot of the current situation (well, 3 months ago, and judging by how things happen in Zimbabwe, chances are high that they may have changed. NetOne relaunched their mobile money solution and time will tell whether they’re getting it right this time around.
From the table above it can be seen that even though Government owned entities NetOne and Telecel have the capabilities of intergrating with Government services, they have chosen not to exercise this option. Their market share sitting at just over 2%, a total of 67,817 subscribers, will fill our National Sports Stadium while EcoCash subscribers can take up the total population of Harare, Chitungwiza and Bulawayo all combined!
As a ratio, for every 50 EcoCash subscribers, there’s just one OneMoney/TeleCash.
The agent network follows a similar trend, with EcoCash having convinced over 23,000 agents to sign up for the service.
The success of EcoCash has principally been based on Econet’s innovative solutions. Ecocash must be commended for transforming the financial landscape in Zimbabwe, having integrated with several banks, and breaking into the unfamiliar territories like salaries coming through EcoCash and integration with several banks thereby increasing financial accessibility to the general populace of Zimbabwe and abroad.
Well Done to EcoCash for keeping Zimbabwe on the world map.
Click on the link to download the complete report. Abridged_Sector_Perfomance_report_2nd_Quarter_2017
