It’s hard to imagine it now but remember a time when Ecocash the largest mobile wallet was not on ZIPIT. The only way to move money between Ecocash and other bank accounts and wallets was through Steward’s Sosholoza banking “app”. It seems the service is no longer working having been abandoned sometime last year by Steward. Sending “Hi” to the app on WhatsApp gets you a single tick and nothing else.
What was Sosholoza?
Back in 2019 when mobile money usage was at its peak, Ecocash had an astounding 97% market share. As long as a customer wanted to send money to another Ecocash user there was no issue. However there were still people with bank account and some who were using OneMoney instead. Sending money to these people would involve you transferring money into your bank first (that’s if you had one) and then using ZIPIT to send the money to the receiving account. That’s when Sosholoza came in. The same could be accomplished by:
- Saving the WhatsApp number +263777222333
- Sending the word “Hi” and following the prompts
- You would get an Ecocash prompt
- Enter your pin and
- The money would be send to the receiving account
The process could also work in reverse. You could send funds from OneMoney to Ecocash. In fact the Any Bank and Any Wallet mantra was not just a marketing gimmick. The service worked as advertised. You could transfer money from any bank account to any wallet. The problem is the service was never universally popular although some people embraced it. For most people it was just easier to get an Econet line and have Ecocash.
The ZIPIT Steamroller
When the RBZ commanded all banks and mobile wallets to use ZIPIT there was suddenly no need for Sosholoza. Steward seems to have abandoned the service sometime last year. That’s when the account changed from being a business WhatsApp account to a normal account. Normal everyday users are unlikely to be affected by this change. Most people already use ZIPIT anyway.
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