Safaricom Brings M-pesa Tap-to-Pay to Pesapal POS

In Short

• Safaricom is adding contactless M-PESA payments to Pesapal’s point-of-sale network in Kenya.
• The rollout starts with 30,000 Pesapal POS terminals, mainly in restaurants, hotels, and selected supermarkets.
• Customers can tap an NFC-enabled phone or scan a QR code to pay, without typing a Till Number.

What Happened

Safaricom is bringing M-PESA tap-to-pay to physical merchants through a partnership with Pesapal. The goal is to let customers pay at checkout by tapping their phone on a compatible POS terminal, or by scanning a QR code.

Tap-to-pay uses NFC, which is a short-range wireless feature in many Android phones and iPhones. It works like placing your phone close to a card terminal, so the payment goes through without manually entering details.

For customers without NFC, the same Pesapal terminals can show a QR code. A QR code is a square barcode you scan with a phone camera to start a payment.

Safaricom says customers will not pay extra charges for using tap or QR, compared to paying via a normal M-PESA Till Number. The Till Number system still sits underneath the experience, so merchants do not need to change how they receive funds.

The rollout begins with 30,000 terminals already deployed by Pesapal in Kenya, according to Pesapal founder Agosta Liko. Safaricom is effectively “plugging into” an existing POS footprint instead of building its own in-store terminal network.

Why It Matters

For Safaricom, this is a faster path to expand in-person M-PESA acceptance beyond USSD and manual Till Number entry. Using an existing POS fleet also reduces hardware rollout costs and merchant onboarding time.

For merchants, tap and QR can shorten queues and reduce payment errors caused by mistyped Till Numbers. It also aligns M-PESA more closely with the card-like checkout experience many shoppers already expect.

For Kenya’s payments market, the partnership signals the next phase of mobile money at the counter, blending wallet payments with modern POS terminals and contactless checkout flows.