Safaricom has today announced the launched of an MPESA bill management service that they are targeting towards businesses.
“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 said.
They are targeting this service to businesses or utilities with repeat payments thereby offering a platform where they can present and receive pending payments from customers and issue electronic receipts.
Schools for example can use the Bill Manager platform to customize different type of fees such as tuition, lunch, transport, school trips and among others. Property agents can send rent payment reminders and reconcile any received payments. Utility providers like water and internet providers will be able to automatically bill their customers who in turn will have a way to easily view and manage pending bills.
Safaricom says all payments received through MPESA to all businesses will be instantly reconciled on the platform. There is also an option to manually add payments. Customers using the service will also instantly receive an SMS reminder when a new bill is generated or when the bill is due.
This service is free for all businesses with a Lipa Na MPESA or Pay Bill account who can login to MPESA Bill Manager website. The SMS bill requests and invoices generated by the system are free for the business.
