EcoCash appear to have had silently raised charges for EcoCash biller charges, in some transitions slapping a $5 fee per transaction.
In the new developments which have not been explained by the service provider, there are some non-consumer services that are now incurring charges that were not there in the past.
Merchant to merchant transactions now come at a cost -there seems to be a 1% of the amount transferred being charged. This charge wasn’t there before and it isn’t clear if these charges in bands or of it’s a set percentage.
Bulk payment lines seem to have fees of 2% + $5 which was not the case before.
Some agent lines are also being charged for cashing in which should not be the case. We are not sure when this 2% started getting levied on cash in transactions but what we do know is that the 2% digital tax is exempt from cash-ins, deposits and also on payroll lines distributing salaries.
It’s not clear because EcoCash has not communicated to the affected parties that they are now incurring more charges and we are left to guess what the charges actually are.
Earlier this year, EcoCash sought approval from the RBZ to raise charges and whilst they initially got approval, at some point between getting that approval and upping the charges RBZ changed their minds and the new charges were never announced officially.
It isn’t clear if charges for consumers and those of non-consumers are approved at the same time but it seems the charges for consumers stayed put whilst those for non-consumers went up – though we are not sure when exactly there was a shift.
It now seems like some charges for non-consumer services were raised without announcement since that would reduce the likelihood of people noticing it.
The only problem with that tactic is that the impact of such a change on businesses – especially smaller businesses which rely on EcoCash more will be quite significant and the fact that these businesses aren’t told when such an important change is, in my opinion, the wrong way to go about it.
Additional reporting: Tech Zim