Getting paid
How to take card and mobile payments in your shop
Accepting a payment has two halves that people tend to merge, and separating them makes every decision easier. The first is capturing the money: the terminal, the app or the prompt that moves funds from the customer to you. The second is recording it: attaching that payment to the sale, the items and the ledger.
Most shops solve the first and neglect the second, which is why so many end the day matching a card terminal's total against a till roll against a mobile money statement. The money arrived; nothing knows what it was for.
This page covers both — what you need to accept each payment type, roughly what each costs, and how to stop the end-of-day reconciliation from being a job at all.
What you get
What this gives you
Cards
Visa and Mastercard through a payment provider, charged as a percentage of each transaction. Recorded against the sale rather than only on the terminal's own report.
Mobile money
Where it is a primary rail, payment prompts the customer's phone and the sale closes on confirmation — so a cashier is never deciding whether a payment arrived.
Cash
With a change calculator, an open and close drawer count, and a variance that is recorded rather than absorbed.
Bank transfer
Matched against the invoice it paid, rather than found later in a statement and attributed from memory.
On account
Sell on credit against a customer record, with the balance visible at the counter and settlement recorded against the right invoices.
One ledger under all of them
Every method posts to the same books, tagged to the sale. End of day becomes a report rather than an exercise in matching three totals.
Step by step
Getting set up to take payments
Work out how your customers actually pay
Not how you would like them to. Watch a normal week: what share is cash, cards, mobile money, transfers, or on account. The answer varies enormously by market and by trade, and it determines which of the steps below matter to you and which are theory.
Get the business account and registration in place
Every payment provider will ask for the same things: a registered business, a bank account in the business's name, and identification for the owners. Start this first — it is the step with a waiting period, and it is the one that delays launches.
Choose a card acquirer or payment provider
Compare on four things: the percentage per transaction, any fixed fee per transaction, how quickly funds settle into your account, and whether there is a monthly minimum or terminal rental. A lower percentage with slow settlement can be worse for a business that needs the cash.
Set up mobile money properly, where it applies
In markets where mobile money is a primary rail, get a business account rather than taking payments to a personal number — it is the difference between a reference you can reconcile and a screenshot you have to trust. Where an API is available, connect it so the payment confirms itself rather than being confirmed by a cashier reading a message.
Keep cash disciplined
Cash is not free. It needs a float, a drawer count at open and close, a rule for what happens when the count is short, and a banking routine. A till that reconciles to the cash in the drawer every evening catches errors within a day, which is the only time they are still explainable.
Make every method land in one place
This is the step that turns the previous five from a pile of arrangements into a system. Whatever the customer used, the payment should attach to the sale, the items and the ledger automatically. If your answer to 'what did we take today' involves adding up three sources, this step has not been done.
What each method actually costs you
Cards cost a percentage, sometimes plus a small fixed amount per transaction, and the rate you are offered depends on your volume and your negotiating. It is worth revisiting annually — rates offered to a business doing meaningful volume are usually better than the ones offered at signup, and providers rarely volunteer the improvement.
Mobile money varies widely by market: some rails charge the merchant, some the customer, some both. Where there is an API, the fee is usually similar to cards. Where there is not, the cost is not a fee at all but the cashier time spent confirming payments manually and the errors that produces.
Cash looks free and is not. It costs a float, the time spent counting, the trips to the bank, the risk of holding it and the losses from miscounting. In a busy shop this is a real number, and it is worth calculating before deciding cash is cheaper than cards.
Bank transfer is cheap per transaction and expensive in administration, because someone has to match payments to invoices. That cost falls away entirely when the system does the matching.
Do I need a card machine?
Not necessarily a traditional one. There are three arrangements and they suit different volumes. A standalone terminal from an acquirer is the familiar option — reliable, and its weakness is that it knows nothing about the sale, so reconciliation is manual. An integrated terminal talks to the POS, so the amount is sent to it and the result comes back attached to the sale. A software-only route takes payment through the storefront or a payment link, which needs no hardware at all.
For most small shops the practical answer is a terminal alongside a POS that records the payment method against each sale. That gets you most of the reconciliation benefit without a specific hardware requirement, and it means changing acquirer later does not mean changing systems.
- Standalone terminal: simplest, cheapest, reconciled by hand
- Integrated terminal: amount sent from the till, result returned to it
- Payment links and online checkout: no hardware, good for phone and delivery orders
- Mobile money API: the prompt and the confirmation both handled by the system
- Whichever you choose, record the method against the sale
The reconciliation problem, and how it disappears
The end-of-day ritual in most shops is: count the cash, print the terminal's report, check the mobile money statement, compare all three with the till's total, and find the difference. It takes twenty minutes on a good day and an hour when something does not match.
It exists because the payment and the sale were recorded in different places. When the payment method is captured as part of the sale, the day's takings are already split by method, already attached to the items sold, and already posted to the ledger. The count of cash in the drawer is then the only physical check that remains, and it takes two minutes.
That is the whole argument for integrating payments into the point of sale rather than running them alongside it. Not the transaction fee, which you pay either way — the twenty minutes a day, and the errors those twenty minutes were supposed to catch and usually did not.
Questions
How to take card & mobile payments — questions
How do I take card payments in my shop?
You need a registered business, a business bank account, and an agreement with a card acquirer or payment provider who supplies a terminal or an integration. Compare providers on the percentage per transaction, any fixed per-transaction fee, settlement speed, and whether there is a monthly minimum or terminal rental. Then make sure the payment method is recorded against each sale, or you will be reconciling by hand every evening.
What do I need to accept mobile money?
A business account with the provider rather than a personal number, which is what gives you a reference you can reconcile against. Where the provider offers an API, connecting it means the payment prompt and the confirmation are both handled by the system, so the sale cannot close before the money is confirmed. Availability and cost vary substantially by market.
Can I take payments without a card machine?
Yes. Mobile money needs no terminal at all, payment links and online checkout take card payments with no hardware, and cash obviously needs none. A terminal is worth having when a meaningful share of walk-in customers expect to tap a card, which in most markets it is — but it is not a prerequisite for opening.
How do I stop spending an hour every evening reconciling payments?
Record the payment method as part of the sale rather than alongside it. Once every transaction carries how it was paid, the day's takings are already split by method and already attached to the items sold, so the only physical check left is counting the cash drawer. The hour exists because the money and the sale were written down in two different places.
Which payment methods does sell.ke support?
Cards, mobile money, cash with a change calculator and drawer count, bank transfer matched against the invoice, and on-account sales settled against a customer balance. The exact rails available depend on your market — the live list is read from the platform itself and shown on the homepage rather than hardcoded into a page like this.
Which countries does sell.ke work in?
The software is not geographically limited — the counter, inventory, the storefront, reporting and accounting work anywhere, in multiple currencies. What is market-specific is two things: the payment rails available to you, and your country's tax-invoicing rules. We currently run with merchants in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, and the deepest local payment and compliance integrations are in Kenya. If you are outside those markets, ask before you sign up and we will tell you precisely what would and would not be connected for you.
What hardware do I need?
None to start. sell.ke runs in a browser and as an Android app, so a phone, tablet or laptop you already own is a working till on day one — the phone camera reads barcodes. When volume justifies it, add an 80mm thermal receipt printer (Bluetooth or USB), a handheld scanner and a cash drawer the printer opens. There is no proprietary terminal to buy and no per-terminal licence, so a second till on a busy Saturday costs nothing.
Does it keep working when the internet drops?
The counter does. Offline mode keeps taking sales, printing receipts and reserving stock while the connection is down, then reconciles everything when it returns — so a bad afternoon costs you connectivity, not revenue or a gap in the record. The parts that are inherently online stay online: card and mobile-money authorisation, tax-authority submission, and the storefront itself all need a live link.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
POS systems explained
What a point of sale system is, what it replaces, and how to choose one.
Mobile POS
A full till on a phone or tablet — on the shop floor, at a market, on a round.
POS hardware
Receipt printer, scanner, drawer — what you need, what you don't, and in what order.
How to set up an online store
The seven steps, in order, with the one that actually takes the time flagged.
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store
One system for the counter, the stock and the website — not three that sync.
Best POS for a small business
How to judge one honestly, and the trap that catches most first-time buyers.
Go deeper on a feature
Getting paid the Kenyan way
STK push at the counter, paybill and till confirmation, M-Pesa on the website — on your own shortcode.
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Reports and real accounting
Double-entry books — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet — not a CSV export to somebody else's software.
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.