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Use an aggregator when you sell in several countries and want one integration. Use direct rails where one market carries most of your volume and fees matter. Whatever you pick, check the provider page for each country today, keep one payment record in your own database and plan for late, duplicate and failed payments.
Picture a ticketing site with buyers in Nairobi, Kampala, Accra and Lagos. A Nairobi buyer pays with M-Pesa. An Accra buyer expects mobile money from her network. A Lagos buyer may pay by card or bank transfer. One checkout page has to feel the same to all of them.
Behind the page, each payment type has its own provider, its own rules and its own way of saying "it worked".
This guide explains the two ways to build that page and how to pick. It sits inside our series for buyers: the total budget is in how much it costs to build an app in Kenya.
An aggregator is one company you integrate with, which then talks to many payment methods. A direct rail means you integrate with the mobile money operator or bank yourself.
| Aggregator | Direct rails | |
|---|---|---|
| Build effort | One integration | One integration per operator and country |
| Fees | A percentage, set by the aggregator | Operator tariffs, often lower at high volume |
| Time to launch | Weeks | Months, with approvals per market |
| Control | Less: you follow their roadmap | More: you set the flow |
| Reconciliation | One dashboard and one report format | One statement per operator |
| Best for | Starting out, many countries, small volumes | One large market, high volumes, special flows such as payouts |
If your plan covers several countries and you want one partner to scope it, you can ask Mctaba Labs about a multi-rail payments integration.
Most teams start with an aggregator and add a direct rail in the one country where fees begin to hurt. The code should treat payments as a plug-in, so swapping one provider costs a week, not a rebuild.
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Coverage changes, and a list copied from a blog goes stale in months. Read the provider's own page on the day you decide.
Today, Paystack's countries page lists Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, and links to an Others page for further markets. It names cards, mobile money (M-Pesa) and Apple Pay as channels but does not say which channel works in which country (Paystack supported countries, checked on 3 November 2026). So confirm the channel for each country with Paystack before you promise it on your site.
For Kenya, M-Pesa through Paystack is priced at 1.5 percent per transaction, with local cards at 2.9 percent and international cards at 3.8 percent (Paystack Kenya pricing, checked on 3 November 2026).
For direct rails, the operator developer portals are the source: Safaricom Daraja for M-Pesa, MTN MoMo Developer portal and Airtel Africa developer portal. The MTN portal's front page lists its collection products (Request Payment, Refund, Notify, Payment Status, Account Balance) but does not list countries, so we do not claim a country list for MTN or Airtel here (checked on 3 November 2026). Ask each operator which markets your business can be onboarded in.
Our own work covers M-Pesa through Daraja and Paystack in Kenya. The marketing line on our work page is "Paystack, M-Pesa and Airtel Money in one checkout, currency-aware and mobile-first". For any other country, we would verify the official page first, as above.
Selling in Ghana cedis and getting paid in Kenya shillings sounds simple. It has three moving parts.
Two decisions follow. First, who carries the exchange-rate risk: you or the buyer. Second, whether you hold balances in several currencies or convert at once. A small company usually converts at once and accepts the spread.
Store money as whole minor units, such as cents, and keep the currency code beside every amount. Our note on handling money in code shows why a floating-point number is a bad place to keep shillings.
Mobile money is not a card form. The buyer gets a prompt on a handset and may ignore it, mistype a PIN, run out of balance or lose signal. Your checkout has to cope with each.
The pattern behind this is one payment record in your own database with a status, updated only by verified notices from the provider. Never trust the browser to say a payment worked. Read securing payment webhooks and M-Pesa callback URLs for the mechanics.
Refunds need the same care. Some mobile-money rails refund differently from cards, and some do not refund at all in the same way. Ask each provider how a refund is made before you put "money back guarantee" on the page.
Receipts raise a tax question in Kenya. Our guide to eTIMS integration for restaurants and shops covers what a Kenyan seller must issue after a sale.
Start with the one country that carries most of your sales. Launch there on an aggregator. Measure what share of buyers pay by mobile money and by card. Add the second country only when you have real orders waiting for it.
Ask any team you hire for a short design note that names, for each country: the provider, the methods, the currency, the settlement time and the refund route. If the note has gaps, the quote has risks. Our list of 12 questions to ask before you hire a software studio helps you press on those gaps.
Test with real small payments in each country before launch. Pay from a local SIM, cancel a prompt, pay twice, and check the order status each time. A checkout that passes only the happy path will fail on a Friday evening, when the most buyers pay.
Cost for the Kenyan leg alone is covered in what it costs a business to integrate M-Pesa.
Write down your top three countries, the payment methods your buyers use there and your monthly volume. With that list, a payments team can say which provider fits each market and what to verify first.
To work through it with us, ask Mctaba Labs about a multi-rail payments integration.
Our studio integrates M-Pesa, Airtel Money, MTN MoMo and Paystack into your product, with reconciliation that holds up on busy days.
Book a scoping call