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M-PESA Gets Tap and Scan on Pesapal Terminals

Safaricom and Pesapal are rolling out three new ways to pay in shops: tap your phone, scan a code or photograph a receipt. Target: 500,000 outlets in a year.

Founder and Editor
2 min read
An M-Pesa payment till at a shop in Kenya
File photo: an M-Pesa payment till. Raidarmax, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

[ The short version ]

  1. 01Safaricom and Pesapal have launched Tap-to-Pay, Dynamic Scan-to-Pay and AI Pay for M-PESA on Pesapal's point-of-sale terminals.
  2. 02Reports describe a target of 500,000 outlets across Kenya within a year. Customers still enter a PIN.
  3. 03The headline benefit for merchants: fewer payments sent to the wrong till.

Safaricom announced on 1 October that M-PESA payments will work on Pesapal's point-of-sale terminals in three new ways. Pesapal supplies the merchant payment infrastructure.

What is new

  • Dynamic Scan-to-Pay: scan a code on the terminal, and the merchant and amount fill in automatically.
  • Tap-to-Pay: hold an NFC-enabled phone against the terminal.
  • AI Pay: in the My OneApp app, the phone reads a printed or handwritten receipt to fill in the Till or PayBill details.
500,000
Outlets targeted across Kenya within a yearAs reported. Customers still enter a PIN.

Why it matters

Typing a till number by hand is where payments go wrong. Safaricom lists fewer reversals from wrong payment details as the main merchant benefit. Pesapal's terminals are in shops already, so this rolls out on hardware that exists.

Sources and notes
  • #M-PESA
  • #Safaricom
  • #Fintech
  • #Kenya
  • #Payments

[ Written by ]

Founder and Editor

Victor Oluwaleye founded TheStak to explain what tech, AI and marketing actually change for the people running businesses, in Africa and beyond. A computer scientist by training and a marketer by trade, Victor has spent more than a decade leading marketing teams and building digital systems inside organisations, and runs Induuce Consultants, a growth and digital transformation agency in Lagos. More about Victor

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