Telecom operator Safaricom has announced the launch of an M-PESA Bill Management service
Innovation is aimed at schools, landlords, utilities and other repaying businesses, offering a platform for presenting and receiving outstanding payments from customers, and issuing electronic receipts. For M-PESA customers, the service offers a single point where they can view all their bills, receive reminders and auto-pay bills.
For schools, the Bill Manager platform will enable management to customise different fees such as tuition, lunch, transport, school trips among others, and send fee reminders to parents and guardians.
Landlords and property agents may send rent payment reminders and reconcile any payments received. For utility providers such as water and Internet providers, the service will enable them to automatically bill their customers who will have the means to easily view and manage outstanding bills.
“M-PESA Bill Manager empowers thousands of Kenyan businesses, especially schools and landlords, to digitise their businesses beyond just collecting payments at no additional cost. The service will equally empower millions of M-PESA PayBill customers with better record keeping by providing digital receipts for each payment. Our ambition is to empower both businesses and our customers easily manage and keep track of payments,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO, Safaricom.
All payments received through M-PESA are instantly reconciled on the platform, which also provides an option to manually add payments. Customers using the service will instantly receive an SMS reminder when a new bill is generated or when the bill is due.
The platform will be offered free to all businesses with a Lipa Na M-PESA Pay Bill. SMS bill requests and invoices will be automatically generated and sent by the system at no cost to the business.
With automatic bill tracking and reconciliation, the service saves a business’ customers from queuing to physically make payments and presenting paper working detailing the payment.
