Cassava Smartech which is a flagship in pioneering tech driven solutions in Zimbabwe has once again gone ahead of the curve through the launch of Africa’s first mobile money bureau de change through its mobile money service Ecocash. Ecocash is a subsidiary of Cassava Smartech an Econet Wireless spinoff. The mobile money service has long offered not only convenience but covered the shortfall and scarcity in hard cash, necessitating financial inclusion and viability for Zimbabweans while maintaining a balance in the national payments system and general banking since 2011. This was against a background of tightening hard cash as money supply shot up aggressively without the backing of hard currency. The mobile money service now serves at least 10 million individual Zimbabweans from a population of 14 million, Ecocash invariably becomes the largest bureau de change in Zimbabwe by customer base and arguably Africa.

The bureau which was launched on the 22^nd of August 2019 opened trades at a buying rate of 10.8 and if compared to the parallel market is offering a bang for buck and better returns to the parallel market. Ecocash CE, Natalie Jabangwe, in her inaugural presentation of the new service boasted about the premium offered by their service which was more superior to the parallel market coupled by a safer trading environment. The official RBZ interbank rate on the same morning stood at 9.9 to the dollar. These veiled remarks pits the Ecocash service to the dominant parallel market and begs the question, will Ecocash perform the unlikely miracle of eradicating the parallel market through offering a more convenient and competitive offering compared to the conventional Bureau and the interbank

This effectively and to a good extent puts pressure on the parallel market, but it begs the question, how much more competitive can Ecocash be versus the ever elusive and survivalist animal that is known as the black market. The most notable weakness already inherent in the present setup is that the service is one sided only serving the sellers side and not buyers. An effective system would allow for both buyers and sellers to co- interact and set a market equilibrium. This has also been one of the major challenges faced the mainstream interbank system, where banks have largely been buyers only and not sellers. Such one sidedness in trades has largely distorted the market, increased the premium on the local currency as buyers (banks) have positioned themselves speculatively.

The pragmatism that has kept the parallel market alive to this day even after the introduction of the Interbank system and the various statutory instruments and directives that deal with the forex market is its ability to service the market hard cash through both sales and purchases thus making it reliable despite the premium. due to its market driven mechanism it could be argued that at the present moment the parallel market is more reflective of fundamentals that the interbank market.

Likewise until the Ecocash service could provide hard USD cash both on the buy and sell side just as the parallel market does then the parallel market will be given a run for its money. For now ecocash will enjoy a captive market through premiums that will come from remittance inflows that require immediate local use as well as NGO salaries, and the 50c charge on getting a quote of the daily rate, other than that and it being a proxy for the storing of value the parallel market will continue licking on the wounds of a people that were robbed by the government in 2008.