How do people in Tanzania pay online?
Most Tanzanians pay from a mobile wallet. The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) counted 87.05 million mobile money subscriptions in June 2026, up 7.5% from 80.98 million in March. TCRA counts a SIM card with a mobile money account used in the previous three months. The wallets carried 2.10 billion transactions in the quarter to June 2026. For the full year 2025, the Bank of Tanzania reported 7,959.40 million mobile payment transactions worth TZS 255.13 trillion.
Three wallets hold about 89% of the market. In June 2026, TCRA counted 35.31 million subscriptions on Vodacom’s M-Pesa (40.6%), 27.85 million on Mixx by Yas (32.0%) and 14.31 million on Airtel Money (16.4%). HaloPesa had 10.1%, and T-Pesa and Azam Pesa shared the rest. Vodacom Tanzania reported 14.1 million M-Pesa customers and TZS 734.8 billion of M-Pesa revenue in the year to March 2026. Mixx by Yas is the former Tigo Pesa, renamed when Tigo Tanzania became Yas in November 2024.
Online, a wallet payment is usually a push prompt. The store or its payment provider sends a request to the customer’s number, and the customer approves it on their phone with their wallet PIN. One Tanzanian aggregator documents this USSD push flow for M-Pesa, Mixx by Yas, Airtel Money and HaloPesa, with a status query by order reference. Vodacom Tanzania opened its M-Pesa API to developers in 2020 for consumer-to-business, business-to-consumer and business-to-business payments.
The wallets and banks are connected. The Tanzania Instant Payment System (TIPS), run by the Bank of Tanzania, is the national retail switch between banks and non-banks. It processed 643.96 million transactions worth TZS 54.95 trillion in 2025. The national QR standard, TANQR, lets a merchant accept payments with one QR code or “Pay Number” from many banks and wallets: 27 providers had adopted it by the end of 2025, and the number of merchants accepting digital payments more than doubled to 2.79 million.
Cards are a smaller channel. Banks had 11.95 million cards in issue in 2025, mostly debit cards, but only 2.88 million had been used in the previous 90 days. Visa and Mastercard are the main international brands. Virtual cards funded from wallets are growing, offered by M-Pesa, Mixx by Yas, Airtel Money and others.
What rules shape online payments in Tanzania?
Foreign digital sellers charge VAT. Since 1 July 2022, a non-resident supplying electronic services to Tanzania must register under the VAT (Registration of Non-Resident Electronic Service Providers) Regulations, 2022 and charge VAT at 18%, the standard rate in Mainland Tanzania. There is no registration threshold for sales to consumers, input tax cannot be claimed, and returns and payment are due monthly by the 20th. From 1 July 2026, the Finance Act 2026 makes a digital platform the deemed supplier when it supplies an electronic service to an unregistered person in Mainland Tanzania.
Income from Tanzanian consumers is taxed too. Under section 116(1) of the Income Tax Act, a non-resident digital service provider pays tax on payments from individuals who do not buy for business. The Finance Act 2026 raised the rate from 2% to 3% from 1 July 2026.
Online shoppers can cancel. Under the Electronic Transactions Act, 2015, an online seller must show its name, contact details, a full description, the price and payment information, and let the customer review, correct or withdraw before ordering. If it does not, the customer may cancel within 14 days of receiving the goods or services. A customer may also cancel within seven days of receiving goods or concluding the agreement, paying only the direct cost of return, and must be refunded within 30 days. Financial services, foodstuffs for daily consumption and services that began with the customer’s consent are among the exclusions.
Customer data needs a registration. The Personal Data Protection Act, 2022 came into force on 1 May 2023, and the Personal Data Protection Commission has been fully operational since 3 April 2024. Data controllers and processors must register, for five years at a time, and need a Commission permit to transfer personal data out of Tanzania. Fines for companies range from TZS 1 million to TZS 5 billion.
Payment fees are regulated. In 2025 the Bank of Tanzania capped fees for transfers between bank accounts and wallets, from TZS 10 on the smallest band to TZS 5,000 above TZS 500,000. It has also directed the removal of surcharges on card payments at the point of sale.
How would Omno route payments in Tanzania?
A merchant connects once and sets routing rules per method, currency and customer group. In Tanzania:
- Wallet pay-ins would go to a provider that holds a connection to M-Pesa, Mixx by Yas or Airtel Money, chosen by the network of the customer’s number, with the order pending until the customer approves the push prompt.
- Lipa Namba and TANQR can be shown in the hosted checkout for customers on other wallets or bank apps, since TIPS connects them.
- Card pay-ins can be routed by BIN, with cascading to the next provider in the rule if one is unavailable or rejects the request.
- Payouts would follow PSP eligibility rules, so money only goes through providers that support TZS transfers to the customer’s own wallet.
Webhooks would carry the final status of each payment, the record a back office should trust before shipping an order, and the routing-decision log would show which provider handled each payment and why.
What should merchants plan for?
Plan for three wallets, not one. M-Pesa leads, but Mixx by Yas and Airtel Money together hold almost half of active subscriptions, so a checkout with one wallet misses many customers.
Plan for approvals on the phone. A push prompt can be missed or rejected, so orders need a pending state, clear instructions on screen and a status query when no notification arrives.
Plan for tax at registration. A foreign seller of electronic services needs VAT registration with no threshold, and from July 2026 the income tax rate on its sales to consumers is 3%.
Plan for the cancellation rules. Show the required seller and price information, let customers correct their order, and keep a refund flow that can pay back within 30 days.