Pochi la Biashara or a till for a small food business
When a Kenyan food vendor or kiosk can rely on Pochi la Biashara, and when to move to a Buy Goods or Business Till that the books can match automatically.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Hospitality businesses in Kenya
A food stall near a Nairobi matatu stage sells chapati and tea from dawn. Most customers pay by M-Pesa, straight to the owner's phone. The same line receives money from family, pays school fees and buys airtime. At the end of the month the owner knows the stall is busy, but not what it earned, and when a supplier or a lender asks for figures, there is nothing to show.
Safaricom's answer for the smallest businesses is Pochi la Biashara. For many vendors it is the right first step. For a kiosk or café that is growing, it is worth knowing when to move on to a till, and why your books care which one you use.
What Pochi la Biashara is for
Safaricom states that Pochi la Biashara allows small business owners such as food vendors, kiosk owners and boda-boda operators to receive business funds and keep them separate from personal funds on their M-PESA line.
That separation is the whole point. The money customers pay for food sits apart from the money your brother sends you, so you can see what the business took. For a one-person stall, that may be all the structure it needs for a while.
What it remains is a feature of your own line: the takings arrive on the same phone as everything else you do with it.
Buy Goods and the Business Till
Safaricom describes Lipa na M-PESA as a cashless payment service that lets customers pay for goods and services. The Buy Goods till gives the business its own till number for customers to pay into. Safaricom states that the M-PESA Business Till, an enhancement of the Buy Goods till, lets business owners collect payments on the till and use the money collected to make other transactions directly from the till.
For a small restaurant, that last part matters. Paying the vegetable supplier or the gas delivery straight from the till keeps the business's money moving inside the business, rather than passing through the owner's personal line on the way.
A till also separates the business from you more fully than Pochi can, which matters the day you take on a partner, a manager or a lender who wants to see the takings.
The KYC and ownership questions Safaricom will ask
Safaricom requires businesses to meet its KYC requirements to open a Lipa na M-PESA account. It also states that Kenya's AML/CFT (Amendment) Act, 2023 and the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Regulations, 2023 require all financial institutions to collect, verify and maintain up-to-date beneficial ownership information for all their business relationships. That is why it asks M-PESA business customers to update the details of the people who own the business.
In practice, expect to show who owns and controls the business when you apply, and to update those details if a partner joins or leaves. Ask Safaricom or your agent for the current document list before you go, rather than relying on what a neighbour needed last year.
Why the books match automatically only from a paybill or till
In Achekam, a Kenyan business can register its paybill or till. When a payment quotes an open shilling invoice number as the account number, it is receipted against that invoice automatically; any other payment waits in a list for a person to allocate. At the till, when a customer pays the business's paybill or till number from their own phone, the cashier types the M-Pesa code and the server matches that payment to the sale once only. That only works after the paybill or till is registered for payment notifications.
Either way, the sale or invoice and the payment that settles it go into the books together, posted to the ledger without anyone retyping them, which is what turns a busy day into figures you can trust.
Pochi la Biashara is neither a paybill nor a till, so none of that matching applies to Pochi takings. Money arriving on Pochi has to be recorded by a person.
Recording Pochi takings until you move
Until the business has a till, a short weekly routine keeps the takings in the books:
- Download the statement for the line from M-Pesa.
- If it comes in one of the formats Achekam's statement import reads (PDF, CSV, Excel, OFX, QIF, MT940 or CAMT.053), import it. Each import is checked so that the opening balance plus the movements equals the closing balance, which catches a missing page.
- Separate business takings from personal receipts, line by line.
- Record the business takings as sales income, and any money the owner moves out as drawings, not as an expense.
- Keep the statements for the month together with your supplier receipts.
If the statement cannot be imported, the same steps work from a printout. The point is to do it every week, while you still remember which payment was the office lunch order and which was your cousin.
Signs it is time for a till
- More customers pay by phone than you can match by hand each week.
- Regular customers, such as nearby offices, want invoices and pay them later.
- Staff take payments when you are not there.
- You want takings to reach the books without someone copying them across.
When those appear, a Buy Goods or Business Till, registered for notifications, does the matching for you. Choosing between Buy Goods and Paybill compares the two, and going live with M-Pesa covers the switch-over. Safaricom's Lipa Na M-PESA page describes Pochi la Biashara, Buy Goods tills, the Business Till and the KYC and ownership updates it asks business customers for.
Start with the separation Pochi gives you, record it weekly, and move to a till when the weekly record starts taking longer than the cooking.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
