Getting started
From zero to a running chama in about ten minutes. Prefer to explore first? Open the live demo and click around a sample group before creating your own.
1. Sign in with your phone number
Go to echama.org and enter your M-Pesa phone number. You'll receive a one-time code on WhatsApp — no passwords, no email required. The first time you sign in, you'll add your name.
2. Create your chama
From the dashboard, click "New chama". Give it a name, choose its type (merry-go-round, welfare, investment club, table banking, or mixed), and set your rules: monthly contribution amount, joining fee, late penalty, and loan interest rate. You can change all of these later in Settings — the rules you set here are what the platform enforces automatically.
3. Invite your members
Open Members → Invite and share the invite link in your WhatsApp group. Each member signs in with their own phone number and lands directly in your chama. Assign roles: chairperson, treasurer and secretary get extra tools (approving loans, recording payments, exporting reports); everyone else sees their own money and the group's public records.
4. Record contributions
Three ways: (a) members pay via M-Pesa STK push from inside the app — the contribution records itself when they enter their PIN; (b) members pay to your group's paybill and it auto-matches by phone number; (c) the treasurer records cash or bank payments manually. Historical records can be imported from a CSV file so you don't start from zero.
5. Let the platform do the chasing
eChama automatically reminds members who haven't paid before month-end (WhatsApp + email), reminds borrowers before loan due dates, flags defaulters, and keeps an audit trail of every shilling. The treasurer's monthly report becomes a two-click Google Sheets export.
6. Grow into the bigger features
When you're ready: set up welfare tiers for bereavement and medical support, run your merry-go-round rotation on-platform, put resolutions to a vote, track investments and projects, and do your year-end share-out with automatic per-member calculations.
Your chama gets its own address
Every group gets a subdomain like yourgroup.echama.org — share it with members and they land straight in your chama. Members can also dial the USSD line to check balances and pay from any phone, even without internet.