Business
What is the difference between Paybill and Till Number?
A guide to the correct Lipa na Mpesa product, Paybill or Buygoods (Till Number), to select for your business transactions.
This article will address the difference between the Mpesa Paybill and Buygoods (M-PESA Business Till Number) products.
The difference falls into these three categories:
To understand why two different products exist, we have to go back to the early days of Mpesa.
When Mpesa launched in 2007, sending money between individuals was the only option. However, due to the growing popularity, the businesses that got interested purchased a dedicated regular phone number to collect the payments.
These are some of the challenges businesses that use regular phone numbers often face.
To solve these problems, Safaricom, in partnership with Kopokopo, launched Buygoods and Paybill.
A Buygoods number is a short 6-digit number that a business shares with its customers. Buygoods is best for small customer-facing businesses such as supermarkets, hardware, e.t.c, where such interaction is short-lived.
Pros:
Cons:
A Paybill is a 7 - 9 digit number that represents an organisation. The organisation can then provision another number, the account number, per customer or invoice. This account number makes it super easy for the business to reconcile its books later.
A Paybill number is best for recurring transactions, e.g. Utility bills, invoice payments, gambling or APIs.
Pros:
Cons:
The difference between Paybill and Buygoods is therefore summarised into the following:
If you are looking to integrate the Mpesa API to reconcile your payments automatically, we recommend that you apply for a Paybill number. Why? Since July 2022, Safaricom has started masking our phone numbers in their API responses. With Paybill, you can ask your customers to input a unique Account Number that helps you reconcile the payment.
However, if your purpose is just to use the STK pop-up, then Buygoods will be the recommended option.
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