How to accept EcoCash payments on your website

How online EcoCash payments work

Your website does not talk to EcoCash directly. A payment gateway sits in between. In Zimbabwe the common ones are Pesepay and Paynow.

• The customer clicks Pay on your site.
• They are sent to the gateway's secure checkout, where they choose EcoCash, InnBucks, OneMoney, Visa or Mastercard.
• They approve the payment on their phone.
• The gateway tells your website the payment succeeded, and the money settles to your merchant account.

What it costs

Gateways charge a percentage per transaction, not a monthly fee. As an example, Pesepay's standard merchant agreement lists about 2% for EcoCash and OneMoney, and 3% plus 40c for Visa and Mastercard, plus your share of the IMT tax. Always check the current rates in your own agreement before you price your products.

Some businesses add the fee to the price for card payments and keep mobile money at the normal price, because most customers will pay with mobile money anyway.

What you need to get started

• A registered business and a bank account for settlement.
• A signed merchant agreement with the gateway (Pesepay or Paynow).
• Your integration and encryption keys from the gateway dashboard.
• A website that can create payments and confirm them securely on the server.

The last point matters: a website should always re-check the payment status with the gateway before it treats an order as paid, instead of trusting what the browser says. That is how we build every Axious payment integration.

Deposits, orders and bookings

For service businesses, a deposit button is the quickest win: clients pay 50% to lock in a date, and you get an email the moment it clears. For shops, a full cart with stock tracking lets customers order and pay in one go.

Our Business package includes Pesepay deposits and payments, and Premium includes a full online store with Pesepay checkout in USD and ZiG.

See our packages →Pesepay vs Paynow →