Setting Up an ISP Billing System in Kenya: Step-by-Step Guide

What You Need Before You Start

Before setting up your ISP billing system, have these ready:

• A MikroTik router running RouterOS 6 or 7, already online
• An M-Pesa Paybill or Till number from Safaricom Business
• Your subscriber list — names, phone numbers and current packages
• Terminal or Winbox access to the router

You do not need a public IP address, a static IP, or a server of your own. Modern cloud billing systems reach the router through an agent that dials outward, which also means the setup works behind CGNAT.

Step 1: Choose Your Billing Platform

Pick a cloud-based ISP billing system that supports MikroTik and M-Pesa natively rather than through a plugin. Sign up for a trial and run it before committing — a billing system is difficult to change once subscribers are on it. Jasiyo offers a 7-day free trial after a one-time KSh 250 onboarding fee, with no credit card required.

Step 2: Connect Your MikroTik Router

With Jasiyo the flow is: name the router, let the platform scan it, choose how to configure it, then paste one generated script.

The scan reads what is already on the device — RouterOS version, WAN interface, existing bridges, IP pools, and any PPPoE or Hotspot configuration. It changes nothing.

You then choose a setup mode. A fresh setup builds bridges, pools and services from scratch. An existing setup leaves your current configuration alone and installs only the agent — the right choice if you already have customers running.

Finally you paste the generated script into the MikroTik terminal once. It applies the configuration and installs the agent, which connects outward to the platform and keeps the router in sync from then on.

Step 3: Set Up M-Pesa

Register your Paybill on the Safaricom Daraja portal and point the confirmation and validation callback URLs at your billing system's payment endpoint. Then send one small real payment and watch it arrive.

Do not skip that test. A callback URL that is wrong by one character produces exactly the same silence as a callback URL that is right but not yet activated, and the difference only shows up when a customer pays.

Step 4: Create Your Packages

Define each package with a name, price, upload and download limits, and a duration. Map every package to a bandwidth profile on the router so that a customer on a 5 Mbps plan gets 5 Mbps rather than whatever is spare.

Keep the list short at first. Three or four well-chosen packages sell better than a dozen, and every extra package is another thing to reconcile when something goes wrong.

Step 5: Import Your Subscribers

Add existing subscribers manually or by CSV import, assigning each their current package and their real expiry date. Getting expiry dates right matters more than it looks: import everyone with today's date and you will either cut off paid customers or hand out a free month.

Step 6: Go Live

Send subscribers their new payment instructions — the Paybill number and their account reference, or how STK Push will reach them. Then watch the first few payments end to end: payment received, callback processed, subscriber reactivated on the router.

What Usually Goes Wrong

• Payments arrive but nothing activates — almost always the Daraja callback URL. Check it before blaming the router.
• Wrong expiry dates after import — costs you a month of revenue or a month of angry customers.
• Customers pay but never get online on Hotspot — usually the captive portal never opened on their phone, not a billing fault.
• Nobody tells the customers — the new Paybill and account number need to reach every subscriber before the first billing date, by SMS.

How Long It Takes

Most Kenyan ISPs complete this in a day. The router connection is minutes; the parts that take time are getting Daraja credentials from Safaricom and cleaning up your subscriber list before import.

See the full MikroTik setup guide →