EcoCash might finally be seeing Opportunity in regulation

EcoCash, Zimbabwe's largest Mobile Money Operator, recently announced that it is undertaking a wider rollout of its change solution for retail and other operators. This development is significant because the United States Dollar (USD) is legal tender in Zimbabwe and remains the preferred currency for value preservation among consumers and businesses after a decade and a half of numerous local currencies that rapidly lost value.

The reliance on the USD is so pervasive that some products and services are priced exclusively in the currency, even at the government level. This is because the Southern African nation currently has no local currency that can be traded with suppliers or partners regionally or internationally. Additionally, there is not enough of the local currency, the Zimbabwe Gold (ZWG), in circulation, nor is there sufficient trust within the market for its wider adoption.

The problem is further compounded by the absence of smaller denominations of the USD than the one-dollar note. Businesses that price goods or services in fractional amounts of that note bear the burden of settling the difference with customers, either rounding the price up or down, or purchasing small items to make up for the lack of U.S. cents.

This is not to say that EcoCash has not been testing a solution for merchants to offer customers those fractional sums in their digital wallets as change. As far as is known, EcoCash ran the service with TM Pick n Pay Zimbabwe at select outlets in 2024, which then became widely available across many of the retailer’s locations over the course of this year. It now appears that the service is being rolled out to more merchants who accept EcoCash, both large and small. One major retailer, Food Lover’s Greendale, has already started offering customers change in their EcoCash wallets, perhaps as a replacement for the receipt coupons it previously used to settle change with customers.