PesaPlanner is the personal finance app built for the Kenyan campus economy. Import your M-Pesa history, plan budgets, track debts, and always know what you can actually spend — not just what your balance says.
Being a university student in Kenya is an adventure. You attend lectures, chase CAT marks, submit assignments at 11:59 p.m., survive group work where one member disappears like the 11th digit of an M-Pesa code, and somehow attempt to eat three meals a day. Then there is money.
Five minutes ago, you were feeling like a CEO. Now you're calculating whether walking to campus counts as both exercise and financial planning. Welcome to the Kenyan campus economy, where your M-Pesa balance can look rich while your actual financial situation is holding a crisis meeting.
Hundreds of messages. Deposits, payments, withdrawals, transfers, fees, airtime, food, fare. Everything is there — somewhere between last week's shopping and that suspicious transaction you cannot remember making.
"Your Honour, Exhibit A: KSh 150."Monday: financially responsible. Tuesday: you record lunch. Wednesday: you forget fare. Thursday: "Nitarekodi baadaye." Friday: your budget is a beautiful work of fiction.
Manually tracking takes effort.Having KSh 5,000 does not necessarily mean you can spend KSh 5,000. Rent needs money. Food needs money. Transport needs money. Bills are waiting. That friend you borrowed from has suddenly developed excellent communication skills.
"Niko na ngapi?"One snack is affordable. One fare is manageable. One data bundle is necessary. But combine snacks, lunch, random shopping, airtime, transport and those "si ni mia tu" moments across a month — and your money starts doing disappearing acts.
Wapi ilienda? Who escorted it?Rent deadlines, electricity tokens, academic supplies, a broken charger, an emergency trip home — life has a talent for introducing expenses when your account is least prepared. Your budget said everything was under control. Life replied: "Sawa, watch this."
The charger chose violence.You lend someone KSh 500. "Bro, nitakurudishia kesho." Tomorrow becomes next week. Next week becomes next month. By the time the semester ends, your money has apparently graduated without you.
Witness protection, apparently.Should you cook or buy food? Do you already have unga? How much will today's meals cost? Is that cheap meal actually cheap when you buy it five times a week? Meanwhile, the unga is waiting patiently for its opportunity to contribute to the household economy.
Cook vs. buy.Commuters, cooks, HELB recipients, hustlers, freelancers. A student who walks to campus has different transport costs. One generic budget cannot perfectly describe every comrade's life.
Different strokes, different folks.You should be thinking about your degree, your projects, your future. Instead, you're reconstructing last month's spending, remembering who owes you, calculating fare for next week, and guessing whether you can afford a purchase.
A unit with three CATs. No supp.PesaPlanner is an offline-first personal finance and campus-life management app designed around the everyday financial realities of Kenyan university students. Think of it as that financially organised friend who knows the difference between having money and having money that is actually available to spend.
Except this friend can organise your transactions, help you monitor commitments, track debts, structure budgets, support meal planning, and give you a clearer picture of your finances without demanding a daily consultation fee.
Where is my money coming from?
Where is it going?
What have I already committed to spending?
What can I realistically afford next?
PesaPlanner is not a bank, a lender, or a replacement for M-Pesa. It is a personal financial management tool. And unlike a financial system that assumes everyone lives the same way, PesaPlanner is being built with Kenyan campus realities in mind: HELB, upkeep, rent, matatu fare, hostels, kibandas, side hustles, Fuliza, informal debts, and the legendary struggle of making money last until the next inflow.
PesaPlanner: Because "nitajipanga" deserves an actual plan.
Start with the full 4-minute walkthrough, then dive into the short ads we've produced for the launch — each one built around a real moment in Kenyan campus money life.
The launch ad. Every semester, money disappears — PesaPlanner knows where.
0:30Ask your money anything — even whether the weekend plans are actually affordable.
0:15What a "cheap" lunch really costs when you eat it five times a week.
0:15"Bro, nitakurudishia kesho." The debt tracker exists because kesho is not a database.
0:15Cook, buy, or check what's already in the cupboard. Meal planning meets kitchen stock.
0:15The day upkeep lands and you feel like a shareholder. PesaPlanner makes it last the semester.
0:15Every comrade has different economics. PesaPlanner fits your life, not a template.
0:15PesaBuddy speaks English, Kiswahili, and Sheng — including the mix.
0:15Eighteen core capabilities — from M-Pesa import to PesaBuddy — that turn scattered messages and half-remembered debts into a clear picture of your financial life.
Your M-Pesa messages already contain a lot of information about your financial life. PesaPlanner helps turn supported transaction messages into a structured financial record. Instead of entering every transaction manually, the app processes recognised messages and organises the information into useful records.
Scanning supported SMS history · parsing recognised messages · organising by date, amount, type, category, merchant · recognising income, spending, transfers, withdrawals · duplicate detection · pending-review workflow · supporting shared transaction text and statement-import workflows where implemented · searching and reviewing recorded transactions.
Reduce repetitive bookkeepingYour M-Pesa balance might look encouraging. Unfortunately, rent has not agreed to disappear just because the number looks nice. PesaPlanner distinguishes your recorded financial position from money that may be available for discretionary spending — using recorded transactions, configured budgets, and upcoming obligations.
Context, not just confidence.A central view of your recorded financial position: income, expenditure, budgets, upcoming commitments, insights and alerts. One place to start — instead of opening multiple screens to figure out what's happening.
"Niko sawa, ama ni balance?"Organise spending across rent, food, transport, airtime and data, academic supplies, personal purchases, bills and savings. A budget doesn't mean no fun — it means you know whether the chips are coming from the snack budget or the rent budget.
Give every shilling a job.Understand patterns across categories and trends. Realise that transport costs more than expected, or that frequent small purchases collectively consume a substantial portion of your budget. Replace "I don't know where the money went" with a clearer picture.
Your money left clues.HELB upkeep, support from home, freelancing, small businesses, casual work, online gigs. See money coming in and how it relates to your financial position — instead of treating every increase as unexplained financial magic.
HELB imeingia? Nice.Rent, electricity tokens, internet or data, subscriptions, school-related payments, other obligations. Make deadlines visible before they become urgent. Because discovering rent is due tomorrow when you thought it was next week is an unnecessary plot twist.
Rent shouldn't be a surprise.Record money you've lent and money you owe. Outstanding amounts, repayment progress, details. That KSh 500 you lent your friend has not disappeared from the history of humanity — you can keep a record of it. PesaPlanner records and organises debts; it cannot guarantee repayment.
"Nitakulipa kesho" ≠ database.Buying a laptop. Replacing your phone. Preparing for a semester expense. Building an emergency reserve. Saving for accommodation or a move. Make your goals visible instead of waiting to see whether money somehow remains at the end of the month.
Future you says thanks.Look beyond your immediate cash balance. Where information is available, PesaPlanner brings recorded assets and liabilities into a broader financial summary — adding perspective to day-to-day money management.
The bigger picture.Locate individual transactions, review financial activity and understand spending across a selected period. No need to start a family WhatsApp investigation just to establish what happened to KSh 800.
Investigative comrade mode.Food is not an optional lifestyle subscription. It is a recurring requirement, and its cost matters. Organise meals and consider food expenses alongside your wider budget — cook or buy, cheap or cheaper, planned or impulsive.
Feed the body and the brain.Track recorded food supplies and ingredients — support meal planning and consider what's already available before purchasing more. Also organise recorded personal items. Before buying more unga, check whether the unga from last week is still patiently waiting for its big moment.
What do you already have?Accommodation, transport, food, academic supplies, travel home, personal purchases, unexpected costs. Connect money management with your educational context — because finishing the semester should be an academic achievement, not an endurance challenge.
Think beyond today.Walking vs. commuting. Cooking vs. buying meals. Parents vs. HELB vs. hustles. PesaPlanner accounts for accommodation arrangements, funding patterns, family support, personal routines and priorities. A budget should fit your life — not assume every student lives in the same hostel.
Different economics for every comrade.Meet PesaBuddy, PesaPlanner's conversational financial companion. Instead of manually navigating every screen, ask about your money and the information available in the app.
Planned experience: English, Kiswahili and Sheng (including mixed-language conversations) · context-aware follow-up handling · conversation memory for continuity · financial explanations based on available app information · a more approachable, locally relevant personality.
Yes — it should understand that "Niko na thao tano, lakini niko broke" is not necessarily a mathematical contradiction. It may mean that the money already has five appointments.
The important rule: PesaBuddy should explain the financial information, not invent it. PesaPlanner's ledger and deterministic financial engine remain the source of truth.
Conversational, local, yours.PesaPlanner is designed around offline-first operation. The purpose is to keep ordinary money management useful without making a constant internet connection a prerequisite.
Local financial records · local transaction processing · no mandatory cloud account for ordinary core use · no requirement for paid AI APIs in the intended offline assistant architecture · reduced dependence on network availability · user control over financial information · data-management features including export or deletion where implemented.
The intended direction for PesaBuddy is local processing rather than automatically sending a student's private financial history to an online AI service.
Your money. Your data. Your device.Reminders, background work and home-screen widgets make useful information more accessible and support scheduled tasks without requiring you to open the app constantly. Plus settings for language, appearance and data management.
A practical everyday companion.PesaPlanner's wider ambition is to connect the pieces of student financial life so that the information becomes more useful.
Supported M-Pesa messages provide a starting point for building a transaction history, reducing the need to manually reconstruct every payment.
Reduce repetitive bookkeeping.PesaPlanner is designed to help users consider spending alongside budgets and relevant financial commitments — so "KSh 5,000" is not mistaken for "KSh 5,000 to spend."
Context over confidence.HELB, upkeep, rent, matatu fare, hostels, kibandas, Fuliza, informal debts and irregular inflows belong to the environment it is designed around.
Built for the real semester.Food, kitchen stock, semester planning, savings and bills all have financial implications. PesaPlanner brings these related concerns into the wider experience.
Beyond the transaction ledger.PesaBuddy is intended to help users explore their records conversationally, with support for English, Kiswahili and Sheng.
Ask, don't scroll.The offline-first approach reduces dependence on network availability for ordinary financial management — because financial information is personal.
Your data stays with you.PesaPlanner is not promising to make a small budget unlimited. It is trying to help you understand that budget before it starts acting mysterious.
If you've ever wondered where your money went, you're in the right place. PesaPlanner is built for the many shapes of Kenyan student life.
Your upkeep arrives, and you need to make it cover the period ahead. PesaPlanner helps organise your financial picture around your recorded commitments.
Juggling rent, food, electricity tokens, essentials and the occasional unexpected expense. Bring those financial concerns into one place.
Matatu fare is part of your daily routine. Account for transport alongside your other recorded spending and priorities.
Cook or buy? Meal planning and kitchen-stock tracking help you organise those choices while keeping spending under control.
Freelance work, a small business, occasional gigs. Organise recorded inflows and understand how they relate to expenditure and goals.
Happy to help — but you'd also appreciate remembering who owes what. Debt tracking keeps a record without relying entirely on memory.
Understand spending patterns, plan ahead, build savings, become more confident managing your finances. All the tools in one experience.
Designed around university life — but its approach to transactions, budgets, bills, savings and debt is relevant to any young adult managing money independently.
Financial management should help people make better decisions, not merely show them what they already spent.
For a university student, money affects almost every part of daily life: where you live, what you eat, how you travel, how you manage unexpected expenses and how much attention you can give to your education and ambitions.
PesaPlanner aims to reduce the confusion by bringing financial activity together, making recorded commitments more visible, organising spending, supporting planning and providing a more accessible way to understand the result.
It is not about judging every purchase or telling students that enjoying life is forbidden. Comrades deserve to have fun. They also deserve to know whether the weekend plans are financially reasonable before Monday arrives with a rent reminder and a personal vendetta.
The ambition is to help students become more informed about their money, more intentional about their choices, and better equipped to plan with the information available to them.
One organised transaction at a time.
One visible commitment at a time.
One less "Wueh, pesa ilienda wapi?" at a time.
SAUTI YAKO NI MUHIMU
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