Safaricom Launches AI Pay on M-PESA App to Simplify Till and PayBill Payments
Paying for goods and services through M-PESA at a counter can be a bit of a painful experience : squinting at a crumpled receipt to try and decipher a Till or PayBill number, tapping in those numbers manually on your phone - and crossing your fingers that you dont accidentally send your cash to the wrong account in the process.
AI Pay Lands on My OneApp
Safaricom is rolling out more of its artificial intelligence payments tech with AI Pay now available inside the M-PESA bit of the My OneApp app. Over 7 million people have already downloaded the app, and it already lets them try out this feature.
The idea is pretty simple : just scan a printed or handwritten receipt with your phone and the app does the rest. Details get read off from the receipt, and the AI system automatically fills in the relevant numbers and amount on the payment screen.
How AI Pay Works in a Nutshell
Instead of typing in a whole load of numbers from a crumpled up receipt or document, you just shoot it over to the app and let the system handle the nitty-gritty for you.
Safaricom's Group Chief Tech Officer, James Maitai, explained it to us: "The system can actually read the receipt, pick out the important details and figure out how much needs to be paid."
Once the app has filled in the details you just make the payment using your M-PESA PIN or your fingerprint - just the same way you do for any M-PESA transaction.
For a country like Kenya, where a lot of shops and service providers still write everything down in notebooks, this matters
The app can handle handwritten receipts - which is a big deal in a market where lots of everyday trade still relies on scribbled notes and handwritten invoices rather than neat printouts.
But - if your receipt is too faint to read, or just doesn't have any payment details on it, you'll likely still need to type things in manually.
What this Means for M-PESA Customers
The most obvious benefit is that it saves you time - even just a few seconds here and there can add up when you're in a queue.
And it also cuts down on errors : since the app is reading the numbers straight off the receipt, there's a lot less chance of mistyping them and sending payments to the wrong account - or worse, causing a failed transaction. And that PIN or fingerprint verification still gives you one last chance to double-check everything before you finalise the payment.
How this Helps Small Businesses
AI Pay shows that Safaricom is thinking about how small businesses actually work in Kenya. By letting them stick with their usual handwritten receipts, it means they can just carry on as normal without having to make any changes - which is especially good for customers who regularly buy from local traders.
Where this Sits in My OneApp
Safaricom has been working on AI payments for a while now, and this is the latest addition to the My OneApp experience. It joins a steady stream of new features, all of which are now available to the 7 million plus people who have downloaded the app.
