Great read as always Kirui K. Kennedy Clarification on the difference between Paybill & Buy Goods

1. Paybill — For Utility payments with a common Biller Number but multiple users with unique account numbers e.g. Water, Electricity, Zuku etc (usually transaction fee is covered by the customer)
2. Buy Goods — For Merchant payments against a Till number commonly used by Merchants as an alternative to cash, card payments. Cost usually covered by the Merchant & no transaction fee for the customer.

To reduce cases of payment to the wrong Till number Safaricom has Hakikisha service that allows you to cconfirm/cancel transaction within 25 seconds of initiating the transaction. Granted the user experience is not good but quite handy once one gets the hang of it.

M-Pesa runs fully on STK (which has itslimitations) because of security and I agree fully that a Smartphone App will allow for a better User eXperience. The major advantage of STK is that it is device agnostic & this has contributed immensely to the success & penetration of M-Pesa with over 80% of registered mobile users having access to the service.

That said, you’re right and there is a need to evolve the product to take advantage of more recent technologies (QR, Biometric, NFC etc) & the onus is on Safaricom ☺