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M-Pesa

How to keep track of M-Pesa payments at a shop with staff

Match every M-Pesa payment to a sale, catch fake messages, payments to personal lines and reversals, and close each day with a simple routine.

8 min read

You were not at the shop today, and tonight the cashier posts the sales in the WhatsApp group: so much cash, so much M-Pesa. Did every one of those M-Pesa payments reach your account, and if the cash is short, is money missing or did a sale go in the wrong column? Here is how to match every payment to a sale, spot the four common ways money goes missing, and close each day in a few steps.

Set up the shop so every payment can be checked

  • One number to pay. Customers pay one Till or Paybill, printed on the poster, and nothing else. Still choosing? See Till, Paybill or Pochi la Biashara.
  • A notification phone at the counter. A Business Till can have a separate notification SIM that gets an SMS for every payment. Keep it in a basic phone that never leaves the till.
  • Your own view from anywhere. The M-PESA for Business app shows every payment in and out, and one owner's number can manage several tills.
  • Assistant logins for cashiers. Safaricom's guide says an assistant can view the till's statement, sell airtime and withdraw only to the owner's number or bank. Paying others and exporting statements stay with the main operator.
  • Pochi la Biashara is hard to share. It sits on your own line, so its payment messages come only to your phone. With staff at the counter, a Till is easier to check.
  • The code in the sales book. Next to every M-Pesa sale, the cashier writes the last four characters of its transaction code.

Match every confirmation to a sale

Two rules do most of the work.

  1. A sale is paid when the message reaches the shop's phone or app, not when the customer shows you their phone. Safaricom tells merchants not to accept the SMS on a customer's phone as proof of payment.
  2. Tick both ways. Every M-Pesa sale in the book needs a payment on the till, and every payment on the till needs a sale in the book. A sale with no payment is money that never arrived. A payment with no sale is a sale nobody wrote down, or one written as cash.

Tip: give staff the rule in one line. No message on our phone, no goods.

Four ways M-Pesa money goes missing

1. Fake confirmation messages

Safaricom warns that some customers show edited messages or old screenshots. Others send a fake "you have received" SMS to the shop's phone, then call asking for "their" money back. Real M-Pesa messages come from the sender name M-PESA, not from an ordinary phone number. Train staff to check the notification phone or the app every time, however real the message in front of them looks. Forward suspicious messages to 333.

2. Payments to a personal line

"The till is down, just send it to my number." A cashier can also hand out a personal Pochi la Biashara number. The money never reaches your account, and the sale may never be written down. Warning signs: a shift whose M-Pesa takings are far below the others, or a regular customer whose payments stop showing on the till. Print "We only accept payment to this number" on the poster, and tell your regular customers the same.

3. Reversals

A customer pays, leaves with the goods, then asks Safaricom to reverse a "wrong" payment, for example by forwarding the message to 456. For a till, Safaricom contacts the merchant and asks permission before reversing, and Pochi payments cannot be reversed without the owner's approval. Before you agree, find the code in the sales book: if the goods left the shop, decline. Safaricom calls only from 0722 000 000, so do not deal with any other number. If a payment really is not yours, reverse it in the M-PESA for Business app rather than sending money back by hand, and write every reversal in the book as a minus.

4. Cash and M-Pesa mixed up between shifts

When a sale paid by M-Pesa is written as cash, the drawer looks short and the till looks over, though nothing is missing. The opposite is worse: a cash sale written as M-Pesa lets cash leave the drawer while the drawer still balances, and the gap only shows when you match the codes. Count the drawer at every change of shift, note the time, and match the M-Pesa payments for those hours.

A simple end-of-day routine

  1. The cashier closes the book: cash sales, M-Pesa sales with their codes, cash paid out with a note of what for, and the drawer count. A photo of the page, or a report in a fixed format, goes in the staff WhatsApp group.
  2. Open the till's payments for the same hours in the M-PESA for Business app.
  3. Tick off the codes both ways.
  4. Check the cash: the opening float plus cash sales, minus cash paid out, is what the drawer should hold.
  5. Explain every gap tonight, while the cashier still remembers the customer.
  6. Write down any reversal requests and what you decided.

If your staff already post their sales in WhatsApp, Risiti can read the screenshots or an exported chat, and a sale that also shows up in an M-Pesa message is counted once.

Example: one evening at a hardware shop

These are made-up numbers for a hardware shop in Eldoret with two cashiers and one till. Tonight's book says:

  • Cash sales: Ksh 21,350
  • M-Pesa sales: Ksh 27,250, in 14 payments
  • Opening float: Ksh 2,000. Paid out: Ksh 600 for a boda delivery.

The drawer should hold Ksh 2,000 plus Ksh 21,350 minus Ksh 600, which is Ksh 22,750. The count is Ksh 22,450, so it is Ksh 300 short. The till shows 14 payments worth Ksh 26,050, which is Ksh 1,200 less than the book.

Ticking the codes, 13 payments match the book, worth Ksh 25,750. One till payment of Ksh 300 has no sale, and one sale of Ksh 1,500 has no payment.

  • The Ksh 300 was an M-Pesa sale written as cash. Move it to the M-Pesa column and the drawer balances.
  • The Ksh 1,500 never reached the till. The cashier remembers the customer showing a message on his own phone.

The shop is Ksh 1,500 down, and you know which sale it was. Without the codes you would have seen a Ksh 300 cash shortage and a Ksh 1,200 M-Pesa gap, and probably blamed the wrong person.

Use statements for the weekly and monthly check

Messages on a phone can be deleted or missed. The statement is Safaricom's own record.

  • Till: export it from the M-PESA for Business app, or dial *234# to have statements for 3, 6 or 12 months, or any dates you choose, sent to your email. Assistants can view the statement but not export it.
  • Paybill: export it from the M-PESA web portal (org.ke.m-pesa.com).
  • Pochi la Biashara: dial *334#, then Pochi la Biashara and My Account, where Safaricom's care team said in February 2026 that statements are found (My Statements). Menus change, so if yours differs, ask Safaricom.
  • A personal M-Pesa line: free in the M-PESA app, or on *334# under My Account and M-PESA Statement, for up to two years back.

Each week, compare the statement's daily totals with the book, and look for reversals and withdrawals you did not make. Save each month's statement with your books: KRA expects records to be kept for five years. Risiti reads Till, Paybill and Pochi la Biashara statements in CSV, Excel or PDF and turns them into sales and expenses.

What to do today

  1. Take down any sign or note with a personal number on it. Put up one payment number and "We only accept payment to this number".
  2. Move the till's notification phone to the counter. No goods leave until the message arrives there.
  3. Give each cashier an assistant login instead of your PIN.
  4. Start writing the last four characters of each M-Pesa code next to the sale.
  5. Tonight, run the end-of-day routine once with your cashier.
  6. Download last month's statement and keep it.

Sources

Risiti for shops and kiosksFor dukas, kiosks and minimarts: every till payment becomes a sale, stock paid by M-Pesa becomes an expense, and you see what is left every evening.

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