There is now an acute shortage of Econet scratch cards, here is how you can cheaply buy airtime using cash

There is an acute shortage of Econet airtime scratch cards at the moment. This began a few weeks ago when there was suddenly a dearth and most tuckshops and airtime vendors ran out and could not restock as their usual suppliers also had run out. It’s not clear what is going on but it seems Econet has stopped, perhaps temporarily, selling physical scratch cards.

This has led to some vendors selling these cards at a premium although given the fact that there are other ways to recharge they will not stand to make much money out of the scheme. The thing is while a number of people still buy airtime scratch cards using cash the large proportion of people out there prefer to use their banks, platforms like ours and many others.

Here is how to buy airtime cheapily using cash

If you are one of those people who still use cash to buy airtime you don’t have to pay the steep ridiculous prices that vendors are asking. What are in short supply are just the traditional scratch cards you are used to. It doesn’t mean other PIN cards are not being produced.

You can buy airtime cards in supermarkets at their point of sale. You just walk in and can even specify what denominations you want to buy. The till operator then generates a slip with recharge PINs you can use. The only drawback is that the PIN is not shielded so there is no way to prove the PIN has not been used and the person sitting next to you can steal the PIN but for personal use that shouldn’t be an issue. You can just keep the slips in your wallet and recharge when you need to.

You can also make use of HotRecharge vendors. Most tuckshops are part of the HotRecharge program. This system uses pinless recharge but is also capable of generating recharge PINs if one wishes. What you want is airtime and not the recharge PIN so you can still buy airtime. In fact, given the cash premium, most tuckshops are quite happy to buy you airtime using Ecocash and take the cash.

We sell airtime using PayPal and PayFast

We also do sell airtime here. You just need to use the form below. Our system allows you to buy airtime for yourself or your relatives no matter where you are in the world. The airtime is automatically delivered instantly once you complete payment.