AI Pay and the new M-Pesa: what smarter payments mean for your marketing

In early October 2026, Safaricom and Pesapal announced new ways to pay with M-Pesa: Scan-to-Pay using QR codes, Tap-to-Pay on Pesapal terminals, and AI Pay, which lets a customer photograph a printed or handwritten receipt so the app fills in the Till or Paybill number and the amount, according to Safaricom's press release. Techweez reported that AI Pay sits inside My OneApp, the app Safaricom launched in April to bring M-Pesa and MySafaricom together, and that it works where the receipt's details are clear enough to read.

It is a small feature with a large signal. AI is moving from chat windows into the most ordinary moment in Kenyan commerce: paying for something.

Paying is becoming the easy part

Every step removed from payment matters. Mistyped Paybill numbers, wrong amounts and the pause while a customer looks for the account number all cost sales. Scan, tap and snap reduce that friction.

When paying gets easier, the hard parts of selling become, relatively, everything that happens before it: being noticed, being trusted and being chosen. That is a marketing problem, not a payments one.

What this means for a small business

1. Make your payment details readable. If customers will scan receipts or QR codes, print them clearly. A smudged receipt defeats the AI.
2. Put the QR code where the decision happens. On the counter, the menu, the delivery bag, the poster.
3. Show the payment step in your ads. A clip that ends with a customer scanning to pay tells viewers the purchase is quick and safe.
4. Answer before they pay. Most customers ask a question before they buy. Fast replies on WhatsApp still win the sale.

The new shop window

As payments get smarter, your marketing has to do more of the persuading. That is where Tari Studio fits. Make a short video of your product in a setting your customers recognise, publish it to Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, and add a tracked WhatsApp link so each conversation is tagged with the post that brought it. How tracked links work.

Tari Studio itself takes payment by M-Pesa as a prompt on your phone, or by card and other options on Paystack's secure page. Credits and billing.

A wider shift

AI in payments will not stop at reading receipts. Fraud detection, credit scoring and personalised offers are already being built across African fintech. For businesses, the lesson is the same each time: the infrastructure is getting smarter, and the advantage goes to whoever communicates most clearly with customers on top of it.

A note on trust

Easier payments also attract fraudsters. Remind customers in your content which Till or Paybill number is genuinely yours, and never to pay a number sent by a stranger claiming to be you.

Make a video that ends in a payment.