A year into the market pesaDroid is changing how we view mobile money. It is an Android app that observes your M-Pesa SMS messages, enabling you to visualize your transactions in different ways as well as generating several statements from these transactions.

The question then is, how exactly does it work, and what are its limitations? Well, take a look:

Features of this app:

1. pesaDroid imports your M-Pesa transactions and saves them on your phone.
2. You can view your M-Pesa transaction history including charges.
3. Let’s you view all transactions between you and anyone at one place.
4. You can put people in groups and collectively track your transactions with them.
5. You can generate and e-mail weekly or monthly statements to a e-mail address of your choice.
6. You can safely back up all your M-Pesa transaction history on file storage. In case you lose your phone, you will still be able to locate your backed up M-Pesa transactions.
7. You can also add a note on every transactions, making it easy to remember all of your transactions.
8. You can also hide those M-Pesa transactions you want archived.

How does pesaDroid work?

By giving pesaDroid permission to accesses your SMS inbox and incoming SMS messages, pesaDriod compliles all your M-Pesa transactions messages stored in your phones.

Unfortunately, pesaDriod cannot fetch deleted or old M-Pesa transactions that are not stored in your phone, the app depends on existing and incoming messages for all your transaction history. There are though plans to enable users retrieve and analyse their entire M-Pesa history, that’s after Safaricom releases Application Programming Interface (API) to developers.

Limitations of the app:

In addition to not being able to retrieve deleted or old M-Pesa transaction, pesaDroid currently only works on the Android platform, there are plans to eventually roll out the app on all mobile devices.

pesaDroid only supports M-Pesa transactions, there are though plans to eventually add Airtel Money, Yu Cash, Orange Money and mobile banking to pesaDroid.

Based on the pesaDroid app type you download, you are able to send a copy of your M-Pesa statement to an e-mail address of your choice.

You have an option of either downloading the paid edition, Alfajiri or the free edition, Bwerere, from the Google Play store or on the pesaDroid website. Downloading the Alfajiri version from the Google Play store costs USD 2.99, while downloading it from www.pesadroid.com cost KES 250, this though entails buying using M-Pesa.

Bwerer, the free version bears similar features as the Alfajiri, paid version, except for the ability to send transactions to e-mail address.