Published: 27 January 2014

ECONET Wireless Zimbabwe says more than $200 million is being transacted per month through the telecommunication's mobile money transfer platform, EcoCash, resulting in the transformation of the country into a cashless economy. Cashless economy refers to a society without cash, it uses digital money instead, transactions by digital devices such as mobile phones.

Among others, in a cashless economy, the society needs not to carry money in the form of coins and notes and this reduces insecurity and crime.

The phenomenon also augers well especially in an economy such as Zimbabwe where liquidity constraints have persisted since the adoption of a multi-currency regime in February 2009.

"There's no question that EcoCash is filling a basic consumer need in one of Africa's countries, where a great deal of the population has been excluded from the formal banking system.

"In a little over two years, the service has registered 31 percent of Zimbabwe's adult population, a group responsible for more than $200 million in transactions per month, that's about 22 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - using their mobile phones," said the mobile operator in a statement.

- Chronicle

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