Mobile telecommunications giant Econet Wireless Zimbabwe’s mobile money platform – Ecocash – continues to be the dominant player in the mobile money sub-sector, accounting for 99% of all mobile money transactions.
This is despite the fact that there are two more mobile money platforms in the country, OneMoney and Telecash, owned by NetOne and Telecel Zimbabwe, respectively.
The latest Postal Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ)’s first quarter 2019 report shows that Ecocash has a 94.5 percent market share of the sector, followed by OneMoney with a 4.7% stake and Telecash with a mere 0.8 percent stake.
But for the first quarter of this year OneMoney gained 0.9%, while Telecash’s market share remained unchanged at 0.8% and that of Ecocash lost a marginal 0.9%
In terms of subscribers, OneMoney recorded the biggest gain of 29,2 percent to 312 223 subscribers from 241 566 subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year.
Ecocash remains the flag bearer amongst the telcos with 6,31 million mobile money subscribers in the period under review from 6 million subscribers in the previous quarter, a 4% drop.
The latest numbers show that as at the end of the latest quarter under review, Zimbabwe had 6,67 million mobile money subscribers up from 6,35 million subscribers in the previous quarter.
Highlighted the regulator:
“There was growth in cash-in transactions as well as airtime, bill and merchant payments in the quarter under review. On the other hand, there was a decline in the value of cash-out, cross network transactions as well as the total number of transactions.
“Cross-network transactions have been consistently declining and this is attributable to the lack of comprehensive wallet to wallet interoperability amongst the three mobile money providers. Ecocash processed 99,4 percent of the total value of transactions whereas Telecash and OneMoney processed 0,1 percent and 0,5 percent respectively.”