Ecocash Zimbabwe Reasons For Continued Survival

Zimbabwe's leading mobile commerce service, Ecocash has remained relevant up to date since its inception in 2011 and at its peak in the year 2015 alone handled over US$7.4 billion in transactions which was the highest as compared to its nearest m-commerce competitors. In a time where there is a stinging cash shortage crisis that has been going on since 2016 around the time of April up to the present day, February 2017, one would not help it, but wonder if the top mobile money service will continue to to enjoy its levels of success or it will emerge into a slump along with the cash transactions. As in my understanding, all along Ecocash has gained its popularity at all levels with regard to it's agents who are mainly in the informal sector. They are responsible for most of the actual, cash-ins and cash-outs for most customer mobile wallets, and some of the direct customer transanctions where carried out to a lesser extend on the cross network plartform and their patner banks notably Steward bank. But the trend has long changed ever since the current cash crisis came about, individual customers have long ceased 'banking' with agents following the panicked holding of money away from any kind of banking service due to the introduction of bond notes in October 2016. Most customers have only resorted to cash-only spending and it is only for those customers employed in the formal sector of the economy doing more of 'coerced' direct bank card payments dubbed 'plastic money' as their remunerations are paid to formal banks which have been subject to the economies' cash shortages which has been the major ccause of long bank queues for the bigger part of 2016 up until now in 2017. So, less cabin-agents influence Ecocash will fail, right? I would like to think it would seem as that when Ecocash as brand has failed to adapt to the prevailing business terrain, then that would mean the ethic of entrepreneurship which has built the foundations of the initiative has become desolate. But if not for that as it is now, then Ecocash is a guaranteed success in the face of cash economy slump that is likely to go on for quite a while. According to the countries mobile courriers regulator (POTRAZ), as its 2016's last quarterly report, Ecocash alone was responsible for carrying out 98.5% of all the country's cashless transactions due to its competency on push factors such as marketing and service convenience, and that renders the service a monopoly status in a sphere where competitors (including the banks because they offering the same services such as debit card and master card payments), are open to challenge for a fair market share value. And also according to another report, 70% of the countries' adult population remains unbanked (in the formal sense) due to a number of economic factors that include, huge bank charges and ease of banking services. Merchants and the worker renumeration service have since taken toll ahead of agent mobile- banking which began to inconvenience customers due to the unavailability of of cash mainly for cash-outs . Both the formal and the informal sectors of employment have reportedly managed to adopt Ecocash's payroll and bulk payment service for worker renumerations and payments of huge amounts which is now responsible for most payments in that calibre, and just to note, knowing Ecocash's ability to pernatrate the public the market through viable marketing campaigns will surely see the services grow to a relevant level to serve money transactions. When workers get paid, usually the next thing is looking for ways to spend the money and much of it goes into the payment of goods and services. Given the current cash-shortage crisis, most companies are likely to adopt Ecocash's bulk payment system which will also facilitate organisation to organisation mobile money transactions just as the worker and employee transactions. And in the long run, employees as well as the receiving organisations will automatically adapt to using the merchant payment service which has been proudly embraced by traders nationwide in order to boost sales in the face of the cash crisis. In short, I believe Ecocash will be successful in the face of the current cash crisis due to its 'emerging' merchant and payroll and bulk payment services as the 'cabin-agent' based service is facing cash challenges. And also because it is operating on a monopoly status where it has most of the mobile money subscribers among the country's telecommunications companies where the numbers are also growing at an alarming growth rate, that would see Ecocash serve it's purporse of m-money transactions and grow its business revenues.