Pesapal in one sentence
A hosted checkout you embed in any website. The customer clicks pay, an M-Pesa STK push fires, the money lands in your Pesapal float, and Pesapal settles to your bank account in 24 to 48 hours.
Plus a 2–3.5% transaction fee.
Stack vs Pesapal
Pesapal is a checkout. Stack is the whole shop.
The honest answer: Pesapal and Stack solve different problems. Pesapal is a hosted payment page for sites you already run. Stack is the operating system you run on. If you only need the payment, Pesapal is fine. If you need ordering, inventory, deliveries, and reporting around the payment, you need Stack.
| Feature | Stack | Pesapal | IntaSend |
|---|---|---|---|
WhatsApp ordering, native In Kenya most orders happen on WhatsApp. Either the platform handles that, or you do it manually and miss orders. | |||
M-Pesa STK push at checkout Native Daraja integration. The phone buzzes; the customer types their PIN; the money lands in your Paybill. | |||
Funds straight to your M-Pesa account If the platform holds your money before passing it on, you have a counterparty risk and a delay. | |||
Inventory + stock auto-hide When an item runs out, it disappears from the menu so you stop selling things you cannot ship. | |||
Delivery zones + rider hand-off Set zones, set fees, one tap to WhatsApp the rider the address. Critical for Nairobi commerce. | |||
Monthly cost (entry) What you actually pay each month before transactions. | Free up to 30 orders Then KES 1,500/mo. | Free Transaction fees only. | Free Transaction fees only. |
Transaction fee on Stack paid tier What gets taken out of each paid order. | 1% All-in. No card-network surcharge. | 2-3.5% | 1.5-3% |
Built for Kenya / mobile-money-first markets The team that built it lives here and runs commerce here. Not a flag retrofitted onto a global product. | |||
We help you onboard, free During the closed beta, an actual human walks you through Daraja, your shop, your team, and your first order. | Support tickets | Docs only | |
Own your data + portable Export products, orders, customers any time. No lock-in. | Partial |
What's the actual difference?
A payment vs. a system.
Stack in one sentence
The whole operation. WhatsApp ordering, inventory, M-Pesa checkout (direct to your Paybill, no aggregator), delivery zones, reports, customer history. The Daraja integration is one feature among many.
Free up to 30 orders/mo. Then KES 1,500/mo + 1% per paid order.
Three real questions to ask yourself
1. Where do your customers actually order?
If it is WhatsApp, you need ordering inside WhatsApp. Pesapal only handles the payment after the order is taken. Stack handles both.
2. Do you need money to land in your account, or in theirs first?
Pesapal holds funds in their float and settles to you on a delay. Stack uses Daraja directly. Money lands in your Paybill or Till within seconds. We never custody your money.
3. Are you trying to run a business, or just take payments?
If you have a website that already does ordering, inventory, and deliveries, and you just need a checkout, Pesapal is fine. If you do not, you do not need a checkout. You need a system.
When Pesapal is the right answer
- You already run a website that handles everything else.
- You need card payments alongside M-Pesa.
- You want the cheapest possible payment-only solution and you have a developer to integrate it.
For everything else, Stack will save you weeks of work and a stack of plug-ins. If you want a second opinion, book a 20-min call.
Next step
Sell on WhatsApp. Get paid on M-Pesa. Try Stack free.
Up to 30 orders a month, zero fees. Founding cohort still open.