Which Is Better for Your ISP: Paybill or Till?

Although M-Pesa payments are collected by both a Paybill and a Till, there are enough distinctions between the two that one may allow your customers to pay the incorrect amount or require more time to reconcile.

In a nutshell: Use Paybill for home users on monthly plans and a Till with STK push for hotspot passes. A lot of ISPs use both.

What is a Paybill and a Till?

A Paybill is a Safaricom business number. The customer opens the M-Pesa app, selects Lipa na M-Pesa, chooses Paybill, and enters your business number, an account number, and the amount. The account number is crucial, as you determine what it signifies. Many ISPs use this as an opportunity to ask the customer to type their username, phone number, or customer ID so that it appears on your records. You can also set up a Paybill to deposit directly to a business account, which is useful for accounting. The paybill also has a tariff that determines who pays for the transaction fee – the customer or you. Safaricom periodically updates the available options, so double-check when setting one up.

A Till number, on the other hand, is a Buy Goods and Services number. The customer chooses Buy Goods, enters your Till number and the amount – that’s it. There is no account number. When paying a standard Till (not a business number), the customer pays nothing, and the Till number owner pays the fee.

According to the sources I found, the standard merchant fee is around half a percent per transaction, with a maximum of 200 KES. One source stated that, as of 7th August 2026, Safaricom was allowing free collections up to 500 KES for merchants. As usual, the actual figures depend on the tariffs your business has selected, so double-check with Safaricom. 

Till payments are great for small transactions, where the customer does not want to type an extra thing or pay extra fees.

Fees, account numbers and reconciliation

This is where things get exciting for an ISP. When using a Paybill, the customer types their account number when making the payment. This leaves room for errors – they can type the wrong number, leave it blank, pay from someone else’s phone – and you will have to spend time separating this mess on your end. 

Till payments do not have this option, which prevents those errors. On the other hand, you lose the ability to identify the customer based on the account number; instead, you have to rely on the phone number that initiated the payment.

The best option in this case is STK push – the customer types their phone number on your website, and the magic happens – the STK push message appears on their phone, initiating the payment. Their phone will fill in the till or paybill number and the amount, so there is no room for error. Safaricom’s business solutions have STK push options for both Paybill and Till – but the details are different, so contact Safaricom or your payment aggregator to set one up.

The other compelling reason to choose one option over the other is the fees. Let’s say, for example, that your hotspot offers 20 KES, 50 KES, and 100 KES passes. Choosing a Till number with free collections up to 500 KES will let you avoid any fees for those small transactions. For a 2500 KES home plan, however, a 0.5% fee would only add 14 KES per payment. If the same customer paid via Paybill, it would depend on the tariff and who paid the fee. One source stated that some Paybill options had sending fees of up to 108 KES, which is noticeable to the customer. The same applies to a 500 KES pass – a 1.5 KES fee is nothing, but 14 KES is already quite noticeable. Thus, small payments are better suited for a Till, and larger, monthly payments for a Paybill. 

When reconciling payments, it is best not to rely on SMS messages. Your billing system should ideally be able to pull the information directly from Safaricom, match it with the customer’s account, and update their usage. That way, disputes will be minimized, as customers will not be able to show you a screenshot of a message that supposedly means something else.

Which one for which customer?

When it comes to hotspot customers, most of them are likely to be on short-term plans – day or week passes. Those would be best suited for a Till number with an STK push, as it is quick and does not involve any extra fees. When it comes to home users, however, they are more likely to be on monthly plans with PPPoE. In that case, a Paybill number with account numbers is a better option. Most ISPs will utilize both numbers, as some of their customers will favor one option, and others – the other. Noch Wired can handle both, as it has STK push, Paybill, and Till options, as well as hotspot and PPPoE billing, on MikroTik.

There are four questions you should ask yourself before picking one:

What do your customers pay for mostly? 

If it is under 500 KES, choose a Till.
How do they connect to the network? 

Do they buy passes or subscribe to a monthly plan? 

In the former case, choose Till, in the latter – Paybill.

How much time do you have to match payments to customers? 

STK push all but eliminates wrong payments.

Do you need the money to go directly to a business account? 

If so, Paybill is the way to go.

Thus, most ISPs that offer hotspots to the public will begin their journey with a Till and STK push and later move to a Paybill as they acquire more home users. Getting a Till or Paybill number requires paperwork, so make sure to take it seriously. Safaricom will ask for documents, an ID, and a KRA PIN; a Paybill might require more paperwork than a Till. The details, fees, and approval time vary, so it is best to contact Safaricom directly and not rely on a reseller’s website. Make sure to ask them what documents you need for each, where the money goes (your business account or Safaricom’s), who pays the fees, if the number supports STK push for your billing system, and how much it costs to withdraw money.