Airtel Money and Paypal

Note: This article is outdated. I haven't used these steps in a few years.

Paypal is an online means of paying for goods and services. It is especially useful when working with sites like ebay, where some sellers flat out only want payments through paypal.

Airtel Money is a competitor to Safaricom's Mpesa. What makes me use it is that they have the Airtel Money card, which is really easy to get and use. They are also cheaper than Mpesa. Anyway, more on that later.

So I decided I wanted to use my airtel money card with paypal. I then registered on the Paypal site. Paypal then make a withdrawal from my account. The purpose of this transaction is so as to confirm that I am the owner of the card, that is, the money transacted is not lost.

So the transaction has a description with a unique 4 digit code. The only way to access that number is from a bank statement for the card.

Unfortunately airtel money cannot provide that information. They were rather unhelpful here and I had to physically visit their stores before they gave me that information. So you have to visit Chase Bank( in Kenya). Remember to carry your National Id and the Airtel Money card. They will print for you the bank statement at no charge and give it to you.

Once you have the statement, get the unique transaction number, complete your registration on Paypal, and wallah! You can now use your card through paypal.