How giving works

The ways money comes in

• Paybill (C2B). The member pays the church paybill from the M-Pesa menu and types an account number such as TITHE. Safaricom notifies MyChurch.
• Till (Buy Goods). Same, without an account number; MyChurch recovers which account was meant from the payment prompt it sent that phone shortly before (see below).
• Payment prompt (STK push). The member picks accounts and amounts in the app or on USSD; MyChurch asks Safaricom to show the M-Pesa PIN prompt on their phone. See STK push.
• Bank. Equity and KCB integrations deliver payments made to the church's bank account. See Bank integrations.

From payment to receipt

Member pays  ->  Safaricom notifies MyChurch (a claim)
             ->  stored as received, nothing credited yet
             ->  MyChurch asks Safaricom: did receipt RKT4XYZ123 for KES 1,000 complete?
             ->  Safaricom confirms (or does not)
             ->  matched by account number to a collection account (or a prefix)
             ->  credited: ledger, account total, pledge balance, fundraiser, event...
             ->  receipt SMS to the member from the church's sender ID

1. Received. The notification is stored exactly as it arrived. A repeated notification for the same M-Pesa receipt is recognised and never credited twice.
2. Verified. MyChurch queries Safaricom's Transaction Status API with the church's own paybill credentials and requires the receipt number, the amount and a completed status to agree. See Payment verification.
3. Matched. The account number is matched to one of the church's collection accounts, ignoring case, or to one of the special prefixes. See Account numbers.
4. Credited. In one step: the collection ledger, the account's achieved total, the money account balance, and whatever the payment settles (a pledge, a fundraiser, an event fee, a class, parking, an order).
5. Receipted. The member gets an SMS through the church's Mobile Sasa sender ID, unless they opted out of transactional messages.

Nothing is dropped

A verified payment whose account number matches nothing still lands somewhere: the church's Incoming payments list in the portal, where a treasurer assigns it to the right account. The member is matched by phone number where possible (Safaricom sends a hashed phone number, which MyChurch resolves), and gets a general receipt.