Frequently asked questions

No. Contributions go directly from the member's phone to your chama's own M-Pesa paybill/till or are recorded against your bank/cash books. eChama is the record-keeper and automator, not a wallet. The one exception is the optional escrow service for trades with outsiders, where funds are held in a dedicated neutral account until both sides confirm — that is the entire point of escrow.

Creating a chama and running the core features is free while we grow. Premium features and per-transaction automation pricing will be announced in-app before anything is ever charged — no surprises, and your data is never held hostage.

Members see their own money in full, plus the group records every member is entitled to: contribution lists, loan register, meeting minutes, votes, and reports. Leaders (chairperson, treasurer, secretary) additionally approve loans and claims, record manual payments, manage settings, and see the audit trail. Nobody outside your chama sees anything unless you explicitly list your group in the public Hub.

They can dial the USSD line from any phone to check their balance, see their loans and pay via M-Pesa. The treasurer can also record everything on their behalf — the member still gets WhatsApp confirmations.

Every account signs in with a one-time code to the member's own phone — there are no passwords to steal. Data is stored encrypted with row-level security, meaning the database itself enforces that members of one chama can never read another chama's records. M-Pesa API credentials are encrypted with keys that never leave the server. Every sensitive action is logged in the audit trail.

Yes. Treasurers can import historical contributions from a CSV file (exported from Excel or an M-Pesa statement), so your totals and member histories are correct from day one.

Always. Reports export to Google Sheets in one click — contributions, loans, and annual statements. Your records are yours.

The demo (Umoja Demo Chama) is a sandbox with fictional members and a year of sample data. Anything you do in it — approving loans, voting, recording payments — is wiped and rebuilt every night. It exists so your whole committee can explore before you commit.

Keep the WhatsApp group — eChama replaces the notebook. The notebook can't remind late payers automatically, can't compute a share-out, can't prove to a member exactly what they've paid over three years, and can't survive the secretary's phone falling in Lake Victoria. The platform does all four.