M-Pesa Integration: A Developer's Guide

## Understanding M-Pesa APIs

Safaricom provides several APIs:

- **STK Push**: Initiate payments from your app

- **C2B**: Customer-to-business payments

- **B2C**: Business-to-customer payments

- **Query Status**: Check transaction status

## Step-by-Step Integration

1. Register as a developer on the Safaricom portal

2. Obtain consumer key and consumer secret

3. Implement STK push for seamless payments

4. Handle callbacks for transaction status updates

5. Implement proper error handling and logging

## Best Practices

- Always validate phone numbers before sending STK push

- Implement idempotency to prevent duplicate charges

- Use webhooks for real-time payment notifications

- Store transaction logs for audit trails