Part of upcoming Openpesa Tutorials

Disclaimer: This is more of an exercise than a tutorial.

Hello there,

In this tutorial we will see how to create a checkout page that uses Openpesa PHP package to communicate to Mpesa for payments collection.

• User will visit a checkout page and see a form
• User will fill and sumbit the form
• User will be prompted to enter Mpesa pin from their phone
• User will be redirected to asante page

Prerequisites

Skills

• Basic php
• Basic programming

Required software

• PHP 8 or higher
• Composer

Other

• Internet connection (communication to Mpesa servers)
• VSCode is recommended
• Bash compatible shell is convenient

1. Create Fresh project/Setup on existing

Manual (with existing project)

Recommended for beginners

Assuming composer.json is missing

• composer.json (copy from here)
• .gitignore (copy from here)
• composer.lock will be auto generated

Fresh project+ Automatic

Using gitignore.cli to install npm install -g gitignore.cli or yarn global add gitignore.cli

composer init
gitignore composer > .gitignore

2. Install package

To install openpesa php package run

composer require openpesa/pesa

3. Create 3 files

index.php

process.php

asante.php

Where

index.php - checkout form example

process.php - app logic ie. collection funds

asante.php - redirected after sucess payment

For simplicity

Use Boostrap for styling

Use Emmet for fast scaffolding

4. Get Mpesa credentials

For an in depth guide see getting-started-with-mpesa-developer-portal

Mpesa portal link

tl;dr

• Signup as dev
• Setup 2FA
• Create App - get/copy secret key
• Enable transactions (C2B for our tutorial) for that app
• View docs => On Session docs - get/copy public key
• Add testing phone numbers

5. Update pages-files

Remember the

index.php
asante.php
process.php

Focusing on process.php

• Copy example from openpesa/php-pesa#quick-examples

• update credentials

• get POST data from submited form (see here

6. Test it all

Further

• Use More robust solution alts consider(validations, logging, queues, user data, )
• Use Database?
• Handle Logic for failed payments (retry)
• Why not Laravel?

Happy Coding 🎉