Google Forms and Typeform are good at collecting answers. Neither of them collects money. The Kenyan workaround has always been the same: the customer fills in your form, then goes off to pay a paybill number, and someone sits between the two trying to match transaction codes to entries. We built FormPesa to collapse that into one step. The form itself takes the payment: the customer submits, an M-Pesa prompt fires on their phone, and the entry is marked paid before they close the tab. This post covers what FormPesa does, who it is for, and why we think it is the best free M-Pesa form builder available in Kenya.
What FormPesa is
FormPesa is an online form builder where the payment step is built in, not bolted on:
- Forms that collect M-Pesa. When the customer submits, an STK Push goes to the phone number they entered for the amount on the form. They enter their PIN, Safaricom confirms, and the entry flips to paid.
- Templates that already know the use case. Tickets, donations, school fees, orders, bookings, and RSVPs each ship with the fields and pricing logic that situation needs.
- Share it anywhere. Every form gets a link. Send it on WhatsApp, embed it on your website, or drop it in a post. It opens on any phone.
- Free to start. The free plan includes unlimited form views, STK Push checkout, and embedding at no cost, so you can begin collecting without a till number of your own.
The six templates
| Template | What it handles |
|---|---|
| Event Tickets | Ticket tiers with per-type pricing and a quantity stepper for bulk buys |
| Donations | Preset amount cards, a custom amount option, and an anonymous giving toggle |
| School Fees | Grade band and term selectors built for parents paying tuition |
| Orders & Delivery | Single-item orders with quantity stepping and a delivery versus pickup toggle |
| Bookings | A time slot grid and service cards with session durations |
| RSVP & Registrations | Yes and no buttons, a guest stepper, and dietary preference chips |
Pick one, and it opens ready to edit. You are not staring at a blank page deciding what fields a school fees form needs.
From link to M-Pesa in three steps
- Create the form. Choose a template and adjust the fields, amounts, and options to match what you are collecting.
- Share the link. WhatsApp it to customers, embed it on your site, or post it anywhere people already are.
- Collect. The customer fills the form, gets the STK Push prompt on submit, enters their PIN, and the payment and the entry are recorded together.
The step that matters is the last one. The moment the payment prompt is confirmed by Safaricom's callback, not the moment a customer types a code into a text field, the entry is marked paid. We wrote in depth about why the callback is the only trustworthy signal in our no-code form builder post.
Why not Google Forms or Typeform?
Both are excellent at what they do, and both stop at the same place: collecting answers. Our published comparison against them comes down to two rows:
| Capability | FormPesa | Google Forms | Typeform |
|---|---|---|---|
| M-Pesa STK Push checkout | Yes | No | No |
| Instant payment confirmation | Yes | No | No |
You can bolt payment links onto a Google Form after the fact, but then you are back to matching payments to entries by hand, which is the problem the payment form was supposed to remove.
Pricing that starts at zero
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | KSH 0 per month | 2 active forms, 100 monthly submissions, platform wallet, custom Daraja |
| Starter | KSH 499 per month | 10 active forms, 1,000 monthly submissions, platform wallet, custom Daraja |
| Professional | KSH 999 per month | Unlimited forms, 10,000 monthly submissions, custom Daraja, CSV exports and priority support |
| Custom | Talk to sales | Dedicated account manager, custom integrations and API, SLA with 24/7 support, whitelabel options |
The free plan is genuinely usable: two live forms with a hundred submissions a month is enough to run ticket sales for a small event or collect a term of contributions before you ever pay us anything.
Who we built it for
- Events and workshops selling tickets or collecting registration fees upfront
- Schools and training centers collecting tuition and course deposits
- Fundraisers and community groups tracking contributions without a spreadsheet
- Shops and delivery businesses taking orders with delivery or pickup
- Service providers taking booking deposits for appointments and calls
- Anyone running RSVPs who wants the yes, the guest count, and the payment in one submission
If you have a WooCommerce store
FormPesa is for collecting payments without a storefront. If you already run a WooCommerce shop and need M-Pesa inside your own checkout, that is LipaWoo, our WooCommerce plugin with automatic order completion and one-time pricing. Many businesses end up using both: the store for products, a form for everything else.
Start free
Sign up at formpesa.online with Google or email, pick a template, and have a payment form live today. No till number required to start, and the free plan stays free while you prove the idea.