In order to improve the consumer trust of online shopping, M-Pesa offers merchants a Two Stage Payment service. During the first stage, M-Pesa customer can authorise the order which will reserve customer’s funds. The payment will only be released to the merchant during the second stage through customer’s confirmation of typically the successful delivery of the purchased item.

Both the first stage funds reservation and the second stage payment release upon delivery will be authorised by the customer using customer’s M-Pesa PIN. It should be noted that both the first and second stage of the authorisations need to be performed by the same M-Pesa customer who is also paying for the goods with M-Pesa.