EcoCash celebrates 10th anniversary with exhibition

CASSAVA Smartech Zimbabwe Limited, now trading as EcoCash Holdings Zimbabwe Limited, is exhibiting at this year’s Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) where it has put up a state-of-the-art stand bringing together all its business units and brands.

The listed fintech and digital group’s assets comprises mobile money, digital banking, payments services, international remittances, insurance, agritech, edtech, waste management, ride-hailing, logistics and e-commerce, among others.

EcoCash Holdings participation at this year’s premier business show comes at a time its flagship brand and the country’s largest mobile money platform, EcoCash, is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

EcoCash was launched in September 2011 and gave everyone with a mobile phone in Zimbabwe the chance to send money at the click of a button. Today, and billions of transactions later, EcoCash has not only become a bank for its users, but also embodies everything about the Zimbabwean lifestyle.

The award-winning mobile money platform, which continues to play a significant role in reducing poverty, is now being used for almost everything, from bill payments to grocery and airtime purchases, and receiving foreign currency from various countries across the world.

EcoCash’s phenomenal growth from 2.3 million subscribers in early 2013 to over 10 million this year is a clear testimony of the company’s positive vision of empowering the marginalised and driving financial inclusion in the country.

Not long ago, banks and savings accounts were only for the wealthy and middle-class. A 2014 FinScope study revealed that only 30 percent of the country’s adult population had access to banking services at the time. However, EcoCash has changed all that.

Now more than 90 percent of the country’s eight million adult population has access to banking, micro-insurance, savings and online shopping services.

In 2020, mobile money transactions in Zimbabwe’s amounted to ZW$1.5 billion, according to official statistics provided by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe.

This massive milestone has its roots in 2013, when EcoCash began to bolster its value proposition by introducing new offerings. The EcoCash App was introduced, International Remittances, Bill Payments and a Debit Card, which was linked to Mastercard, for better customer experience.

The period post 2018 saw EcoCash innovating even more with a QR Scan & Pay solution and Mobile Bureau de Change. In the same year, the mobile money platform introduced the mobile business wallet as a solution for formalisation of the informal sector, a move which allowed small scale businesses to be included in the financial mainstream of the economy.

To assist Zimbabweans living in the diaspora to send money to their loved ones back home, EcoCash introduced EcoCash Remit and also partnered with several players such as Cassava Remit and Econet shops to widen its reach and footprint. It was in recognition of these initiatives that EcoCash was awarded the Best Mobile Money Service award, conferred by the GSMA Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, Spain, in 2017, and the Best Fintech Innovation Award, given at the 10th AfriCom Awards.

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