How Your Rent Payments Reach KodiSawa

Before you connect anything, it is worth knowing exactly what KodiSawa does and does not touch. Most landlords ask the same question, and it is the right question to ask: why does a rent app need anything from my M-Pesa?

Short answer: so Safaricom can tell us when someone pays you. That is all.

Table of Contents

• Your money never passes through us
• Why we need the notification
• How we know which tenant paid
• What you are actually agreeing to
• Next steps

Your money never passes through us

When a tenant pays rent, the money goes from their phone straight into your Pay Bill or till. It lands in your account, exactly as it does today.

KodiSawa is not in that path. We cannot receive your rent, hold it, or move it. There is no version of this where your money sits with us, even briefly.

What we receive is a notification. Safaricom sends us a small message that says: someone paid this amount, to this till, at this time, with this reference. Nothing more.

Why we need the notification

A notification on its own is not useful. What makes it useful is matching it to a tenant.

Say Mary in House B4 pays KES 20,000. Without the connection, you see that payment in your M-Pesa statement and you write it down somewhere. With the connection, KodiSawa sees the same payment, works out that it is Mary's, marks her rent invoice as paid, and shows you the updated balance. You did nothing.

That matching is the entire product. The connection is what makes it possible.

How we know which tenant paid

Two ways, depending on what you have:

If you have a Pay Bill, each tenant gets their own account number. They type it when they pay, and we match on it. This is the most reliable.

If you have a till, there is no account number field. We match on the phone number the payment came from, which is why the phone numbers in your tenant list matter more than anything else you give us.

If a payment cannot be matched, it is still recorded. It sits in your payments list marked unmatched, and you assign it to a unit in one click. Nothing gets lost.

What you are actually agreeing to

The connection gives KodiSawa permission to be notified about payments to your shortcode. It does not give permission to move money, to change your Pay Bill or till settings, or to see anything about your business other than the payments themselves.

If you ever want it switched off, you can remove it from your Safaricom developer account and the notifications simply stop. Your Pay Bill or till keeps working exactly as before.

Next steps

There are two ways to set up the connection. Both end in the same place.

• Connect M-Pesa with your Daraja keys is the faster one, about 15 minutes, and you stay in control throughout.
• Ask Safaricom to connect it for you means you share nothing at all with us, but you wait on Safaricom.