EcoCash in COVID-19 prevention plea, urges customers to use safe self-care platforms

ECOCASH, the country’s largest mobile money platform, has urged customers to use digital self-care platforms for daily transactions in order to help stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The government last week announced new lockdown measures, including the banning of gatherings, the imposition of a nationwide 6pm-6am curfew and the closure of all non-essential businesses for a month, in a bid to curb the spread of the virus following a sharp rise in infections and deaths over the festive season.

“We cannot overemphasise the importance for our customers and the public to take necessary precautions to protect themselves and to be safe at this critical time,” said the company spokesman.

“Masking up at all times, social-distancing and frequent hand-sanitisation must be the norm for all of us in order to arrest the spread of COVID-19 and protect our families and our loved ones. Let’s restrict movement by all means and for those who man our critical productive sectors and essential services, please take all the necessary measures to be safe,” he said.

The government announced the new measures after a surge in COVID-19 cases worldwide and a spike in local cases.

The EcoCash spokesman urged customers to stay safe by taking advantage of digital selfcare platforms to buy groceries online, to purchase Zesa electricity tokens in the safety and comfort of their homes and, if they absolutely have to travel, to pay tollgate fees using EcoCash.

“We call on all our customers, for their own safety, to avoid tactile transaction methods, use their phones to buy groceries and other vital supplies and to pay for their Zesa tokens or tollgate fees using EcoCash,” the spokesman added.

He said to use EcoCash to pay tollgate fees, a customer simply goes to “Make Payments” on the EcoCash menu, navigate to “Regular Payments” and select “Pay Tolgates”. They then do a once-off, instant registration of their vehicle registration details (which appear on the vehicle number plate). Once registered, they select “Load Tollgate Acc” on the same menu, credit the account directly from EcoCash and they will be ready to pay their tollgate fees.

“The beauty of this feature is that travellers can load their account way in advance with any amount of money to cover several trips. When they get to a tollgate, they simply tell the attendant their EcoCash number and the payment is automatically done, with no physical contact,” the spokesman said.

EcoCash, which is owned by Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe, has over the past few months made a number of significant investments on its digital platforms to improve efficiency, reliability, create customer convenience and minimise physical contact.

“We will continue to educate the public on the importance of using these self-care platforms seeing that what started as our effort to offer customer convenience, has become a matter of public health and safety with the onset of the pandemic.

“We are, however, confident and hopeful that the lessons learnt from the first wave will assist us, the rest of business and commerce in this country, and the public at large to respond in a better and more effective manner to this second wave,” the spokesman said.

EcoCash’s self-care platforms also offer a variety of customer support functions. The company launched its self-care USSD and web portals to empower customers to, among other things, reset their PIN numbers and initiate funds reversals, without needing to visit the shops or banks.

Customers can safely access and use the USSD and web portals by dialling *150# or by logging onto