Safaricom has today announced the launch of an M-PESA Bill Management service that will be offered free to all businesses that have a Lipa-na-M-Pesa Pay Bill. The tool is accessible at https://billmanager.m-pesaforbusiness.co.ke/. SMS bill requests and invoices will be automatically generated and sent by the system at no cost to the business.
Safaricom says the new tool targets schools, landlords, utilities and many other businesses with repeat payments, offering a platform where they can present and receive pending payments from customers, and issue electronic receipts.
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.
For schools, the Bill Manager platform will enable management to customise different type of fee such as tuition, lunch, transport, school trips among others, and also to send fee reminders to parents and guardians. These are features that have long been offered by third party developers, and now Safaricom has decided to do it for free.
Landlords and property agents can send rent payment reminders and reconcile any received payments. For utility providers such as water and internet providers, the service will enable them to automatically bill their customers who will have a way to easily view and manage pending bills.
All M-PESA customers can manage their bills through the Bill Manager option under Lipa Na M-PESA on *334#, and on the upcoming M-PESA App. Besides automatically receiving invoices and receipts, customers can equally query pending bills at any time.
“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
With automatic bill tracking and reconciliation, the service saves a business’ customers from having to queue to physically make payments and having to present paper working detailing the payment.
