Safaricom and Pesapal’s new checkout tools reduce manual payment entry. Here is what African retailers should measure before upgrading their own systems.
A customer should not have to retype payment details your checkout already knows. Safaricom and Pesapal’s latest rollout in Kenya puts that problem directly in focus.
The companies announced the rollout on 1 October 2026, the same date Pesapal published its announcement. Their partnership brings Dynamic Scan-to-Pay and Tap-to-Pay to Pesapal point-of-sale devices.
With Dynamic Scan-to-Pay, the terminal displays a QR code that automatically supplies the merchant details and payment amount. Customers review those details before completing payment.
With Tap-to-Pay, customers bring an NFC-enabled smartphone close to a compatible terminal. NFC is the short-range technology that lets the devices communicate. Pesapal’s product guide says customers review the transaction and authorise it with their M-PESA PIN or supported biometric authentication.
The important mechanism is fewer details to enter manually. That can reduce typing mistakes, but the announcement does not establish a measured increase in sales or a guaranteed reduction in queues.
The announcement says Scan-to-Pay is already available at more than 60,000 merchant outlets, with a target of 500,000 within the next year. Those figures describe Scan-to-Pay’s footprint and ambition, not proof that every outlet already has the new Pesapal terminal experience.
This is a Kenyan rollout. Nigerian businesses should check their own providers’ supported devices and payment options before planning a similar setup.
Watch the current process. Record how often customers re-enter amounts, wait for confirmation or ask staff to correct a payment.
Connect payments to orders. Your sales system should match a confirmed transaction to the correct order, so staff can reconcile payments without searching through messages.
Plan for interruptions. Test slow connections, failed attempts and repeated taps. A retry must not create a second order or charge.
Measure a small pilot. Compare checkout time, payment errors and reconciliation effort before expanding to more tills.
The practical lesson is to improve the full payment journey. A new terminal earns its place when customers can pay clearly and your team can reliably confirm what happened.
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