What works today and what is still a prototype
An honest breakdown of which Swipee features move real money today and which are demonstrations.
Updated 21 August 2026
Swipee is in live pilot. Some parts of the product are ready for daily trade. Others exist so you can see and test the journey, but they do not move real money yet. We would rather tell you plainly than let you discover it at the counter.
Ready for daily trade
- Merchant registration and sign-in
- Cash sales, by amount or from your item library
- Item library, variations, SKUs, barcodes, and categories
- Stock levels, low-stock visibility, stock history, batches, and expiry
- Receipts and transaction history
- Customer records
- Multiple stores and till login codes
- The owner dashboard: sales, analytics, inventory, customers, settings
You can run a shop on this today. Merchants in the pilot do.
Prototype journeys
These flows are complete end to end inside Swipee, but no external money movement happens yet.
| Feature | What actually happens today |
|---|---|
| Card tap, insert, or swipe | Card details and approval can be simulated. No Visa, Mastercard, or ZimSwitch money moves. |
| EcoCash, OneMoney, InnBucks | The sale is recorded against the mobile-money method. The customer's wallet is not debited by Swipee. |
| Cash-out with an agent | The request, agent selection, and one-time code all work, against demo agents and simulated float. |
| Card reader and printer pairing | Connection states are simulated. |
| Bank payout | The screens exist. No transfer is executed. |
Why record a sale that Swipee did not process?
Because your inventory and your reports still need to be right. A recorded mobile-money sale:
- takes the item out of stock,
- counts toward your daily takings and best sellers,
- produces a receipt for the customer,
- appears in your transaction history with the method you used.
That is worth doing whether or not the money travelled through Swipee.
When will live payments arrive?
Live digital payments switch on rail by rail, in partnership with licensed institutions, and only when the commercial and regulatory arrangements are in place. Pilot merchants are told before anything changes — and the fee only ever applies to a payment Swipee actually processes.
Was this article helpful?