One of the most recent revelations for mobile phone users is Mula, and before you ask me what Mula is, I have a question for you. Do you pay your bills via your mobile phone? Well is you don’t, you do not know the meaning of convenience. Next question, if you pay your bills via your phone, how many times have you had trouble remembering the paybill numbers or your KPLC token number? You do not have to answer that. Of course you have troubles with that. Good news for you though! Mula is here to take your troubles away. Now you don’t have to worry about paybill numbers and all that, start worrying about more serious stuff in your life like washing dishes daily or do 10 sit ups daily. Anyways let’s get to business
Mula is a payment platform that helps you manage and pay bills( DStv, GOtv, Zuku, StarTimes KPLC postpaid) buy KPLC tokens and buy airtime (Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom). Mula is accessible on USSD by dialing *369# and for android users on Google Play Store. The beauty of this platform is that all the paybill numbers for the companies you pay bills to are listed for you.
For example if you need to pay your KPLC bill, you will go to the Mula app or USSD and select KPLC, enter the bill amount and automatically the app will prompt you to input your M-Pesa pin and boom, your bill is paid in a flash. This way you can forget the tedious process of looking for paybill numbers and making errors every end month. What’s more, you can add a company to the existing list if you pay bills to other companies other than those listed there.
Ideally, this platform aims at streamlining the payment of bills via phone. My experience with the platform has been awesome so far owing to the fact that they will alert me when I have due bills and the fact that I do not struggle to remember different paybill numbers.
My experience with Mula
Like stated above, Mula is accessible via USSD and Android at the moment. The installation process is straightforward. Upon opening an account, you will receive an SMS confirmation that you will use to activate the app. Once this is done, Mula opens up and immediately you can get cracking. I signed up and indicated the bank that I use. Note that you could also use the M-Pesa option and once that was done I was able to access the menu to see what else was there.
The first Mula use case for me was topping up the airtime for my backup Orange line using M-Pesa. This is somewhat bizarre (i.e. using M-Pesa to top-up airtime for a mobile line on a competing mobile network) but its something I have done loads of times before using PesaPal’s online airtime top-up service for my Airtel line. This worked with no hiccups and I was surprised at how smooth and fast the experience was! One thing I noted is that Mula is fully integrated with Safaricom’s M-Pesa API so this means no copying and pasting transaction details? All you have to do is accept or decline the transaction.
The Take-Away
Considering that the app is still new, there are some banks that are not integrated with its system. The other thing about Mula is that you can use it to pay utilities and services like Kenya Power, Nairobi Water, Zuku, Nairobi County Parking, etc. However, this list is small and I imagine Cellulant is busy signing up more merchants and other utilities. Mula was also able to ingest my previous Kenya Power transactions via SMS so I could see the thread of payments I had made inside Mula. This was pretty nifty as it consolidates everything on one place – which is exactly the reason that Mula exists – to make payments easier.
Overall, Mula’s impression is amazing and their concept is convenient. However, the app should be somewhat enhanced since it feeds kind of sluggish and at times it crashes. However, I have had no problem using the USSD prompt. Disregarding any external forces, I look forward to using Mula when I need to top-up my other mobile lines as this alone makes it worth it for me. I can’t wait to see Mula’s full range of capabilities over time with more merchants and more uses.
