Get paid in the chat where the sale happened
Most selling here happens in a chat window and ends with a mobile-money number nobody can match to an order. A payment link carries the reason with the money, so the order and the payment are the same record.
Most selling in Kinshasa does not happen on a website. It happens in a chat window — a photograph of the goods, a price, an agreement, and then the awkward part: send to this number.
The awkward part is where the money and the order stop being the same thing.
What goes wrong with a number
You post a mobile-money number. Three customers pay it the same afternoon. One pays the wrong amount, one pays from their cousin's phone, and one pays a number they screenshotted from an older message that belongs to somebody else.
Now you are a detective. Which payment was for which order? Who is owed goods? You have a list of amounts and no references, and the only way to match them is memory.
A link carries the reason with the money
A payment link is a web address that already knows what it is for. It carries your name, the amount if you set one, a description the payer can read, and a reference of your choosing.
Paste it into the conversation where the sale happened. The customer taps it, lands on a checkout page that says who you are and what they are paying for, and pays with whatever rail is available to them.
The payment arrives against your reference. Order 1042 is paid by the person who was sent the link for order 1042. There is nothing to match by hand.
Single-use or reusable
Single-use is for an invoice. One link, one payment, then it closes. If the customer forwards it to a friend, the friend cannot pay it twice.
Reusable is for a product you sell repeatedly — a haircut, a delivery fee, a monthly subscription to your service. Pin it in your shop's bio and let it work all year.
Either can be deactivated the moment you want it to stop. A deactivated link refuses payment immediately; it does not keep collecting while you sleep.
For anyone running a shop system
Links are one API call. A shop, a school fee system or a billing tool can issue a fresh link per invoice, with the invoice number as the reference, and get a signed webhook the moment it is paid. The order is marked paid by software, not by somebody refreshing a page.
What it costs
Making links is free. You pay the ordinary merchant rate on the money they collect, shown in your dashboard before you send anything.
Where to start
Open a merchant account, go to Payment links, and make one for the thing you sell most often. Put it in your WhatsApp profile. It will still be working next year.
What you can check
These are facts about the running platform, not adjectives. Each one is visible in the product, in the API reference or in the ledger.
- A link can be deactivated at any moment, and a deactivated link stops accepting payment immediately.
- Every link carries its own reference, which appears on the payment, the statement and the webhook.
- Links are created from the dashboard or from the API with one call, so a shop system can issue one per invoice.
- A paid link raises the same signed webhook as any other payment, so an order can be marked paid without anyone watching a screen.
What it costs
A link costs nothing to create. The payment it collects carries the ordinary merchant rate shown in the dashboard.
Is it switched on?
Whether this is available depends on the authorisations in place and on what the administrator of a given deployment has switched on. That changes, and an article does not — so the live answer lives on the feature page, which reads it from the platform itself: Payment links on the features page.
Read next
- BitriQR payments — One code on the wall. Every payer it can reach.
- Hosted checkout — A page that only offers what will work.
- Money requests — Ask once. It waits for them.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use one link for everything?
Yes — a reusable link with an open amount works as a general "pay me" link. For invoices, a single-use link with the amount and the reference already set is better, because the payment arrives matched to the order.
What if I send the link to the wrong person?
Deactivate it. A deactivated link stops accepting payment at once, and the dashboard shows it as inactive with the time it was stopped.
Does the payer need an account?
No. The link opens a hosted checkout that offers the rails available to that payer.
Send with a QR code, add money by card or mobile money, issue a virtual card. Sandbox balances let you explore before any real money moves.
Keep reading
Être payé dans la conversation où la vente s’est faite
Ici, la plupart des ventes se font dans une conversation et se terminent par un numéro de mobile money que personne ne peut rattacher à une commande. Un lien de paiement transporte le motif avec l’argent : la commande et le paiement deviennent le même enregistrement.
Your till is the phone in your pocket
A till does three jobs: add up the parts, get the tax right, produce a receipt both sides accept. None of them need hardware. Line items, VAT per line, a total nobody types, and staff logins that do not hand over the business.
A checkout that only offers what will actually work
Every failed checkout loses a customer who had already said yes. Instead of listing eight logos and hoping, the page works out which rails can complete this payment, for this payer, at this minute — and shows only those.