For most spare-parts shops in Kenya, M-Pesa is now the default way customers pay. The problem isn't accepting it — it's reconciling it. When M-Pesa codes live in a notebook and sales live somewhere else, the two never quite match at the end of the day.
Till (Buy Goods) vs paybill
A Buy Goods till is the simplest setup for a counter shop: the customer enters your till number and the amount. A paybill adds an account number field, which is useful if you want each payment tagged to an invoice or a customer account. For a single shop, a till is usually enough.
What STK push changes
With STK push, your POS sends the amount straight to the customer's phone — they just enter their PIN. No mistyped till numbers, no wrong amounts, and the payment is confirmed back to your system automatically. It removes the most common cause of a wrong day-end total.
Record the method on every sale
Whether a customer pays cash, M-Pesa, or splits the two, your POS should store the method against the sale. That single habit means your daily report already separates cash from M-Pesa — no manual tallying of SMS confirmations.
Reconcile daily, not monthly
At close, your recorded M-Pesa total should equal what hit your till. Catching a KES 500 gap today takes a minute; finding it three weeks later is a forensic exercise. A POS that logs the payment method per sale makes this a glance, not a chore.