Betting paybill numbers in Kenya, with the right account number

What are the paybill numbers for Kenyan betting sites?

The table lists the M-Pesa paybill each bookmaker in the Scout Report publishes, in ranking order. Melbet and HelaBet show their payment details only inside the logged-in cashier, so the table says so, and bookmakers that publish no paybill at all are left out rather than filled in from other websites.

Paybills are read from each bookmaker’s deposit, help or terms pages and re-checked for SportPesa, OdiBets and Radabet on 4 November 2026. Minimum deposits are before the 5% excise duty. A paybill says nothing about a licence: GoldPari, HelaBet, KessBet and Megapari, all in the Scout Report, print no licence number that could be found on their sites.

Which account number does each bookmaker use?

Most bookmakers want the phone number registered on the betting account, but four of the bookmakers in the Scout Report ask for a short code or name instead. Getting this field right is often what decides whether a deposit is credited in seconds or left sitting in a queue for support to match by hand.

Bookmaker	Paybill	Account number
Betika	290290	Not published (its help centre was down when checked)
betPawa	290020	PAWA
Mozzart Bet	290059	The phone number on the account
SportPesa	955100 or 5212121	The registered SportPesa phone number
OdiBets	290680	ODI, though OdiBets says the field can be left blank
1xBet	290011	The phone number on the account
SportyBet	590555	The registered phone number
Shabiki	290063	SHABIKI
Radabet	4966000	The phone number on the account
ChezaCash	290030	The registered mobile number
Pepeta	779900	Pepeta
22Bet	Not published	Not published
Yellowbet	Not published (its guide describes a paybill route with an SMS one-time password)	Not published
Melbet, HelaBet	In the logged-in cashier only	In the cashier
KessBet, Megapari, GoldPari	Not published	Not published

Why the sending number matters more than the account field

OdiBets’ instruction that the account field “can be left blank” is a strong hint about how matching works. The M-Pesa number the money came from does most of the work, and the account field is a secondary check. SportPesa says so directly: the money must come “from the same M-Pesa of the Number Registered to SportPesa”, and it cannot be sent from another person’s line or from a paybill or till. Radabet’s deposit page and Shabiki’s FAQ carry the same rule.

In practice, this means a punter who pays from a second line, a family member’s phone or a business till should expect the deposit to go unmatched, however carefully the account field was filled in. The fix is to deposit only from the number the betting account was opened with.

How to deposit to a betting site with a paybill

A paybill deposit takes six steps on the M-Pesa menu and works on any phone, including a basic feature phone with no data:

1. Open M-Pesa, choose Lipa na M-Pesa, then Pay Bill.
2. Enter the bookmaker’s business number from the table above.
3. Enter the account number the bookmaker asks for: the registered phone number, or PAWA, ODI or Pepeta for the three bookmakers that use a code.
4. Enter the amount without commas. Because 5% excise duty comes off on arrival, a punter who wants KSh 100 in the balance sends KSh 106.
5. Enter the M-Pesa PIN and confirm.
6. Wait for two messages, one from M-Pesa confirming the payment and one from the bookmaker confirming the credit.

The M-Pesa message names the business the money went to. If that name is not the bookmaker’s, the payment went somewhere else, and the section on wrong paybills below applies. The betting tax guide explains the 5% in full.

Paybill, STK push, USSD or SMS: which route to use

For anyone with a smartphone and a few shillings of data, the STK push from the bookmaker’s own site is the safer route, because it fills in the business number and account automatically. The paybill is the fallback that always works, and USSD covers the gap on a basic phone.

STK push from the bookmaker’s site

The punter enters an amount in the bookmaker’s deposit screen, and M-Pesa sends a PIN prompt straight to the phone. Radabet, OdiBets, betPawa, Mozzart, SportyBet and ChezaCash all offer it, Yellowbet’s cashier uses a payment prompt, and 1xBet uses one for Airtel Money. Since the bookmaker fills in the business number itself, there is no paybill to mistype and no account field to get wrong.

The prompt does occasionally fail to arrive, usually because the phone is off the network or another M-Pesa request is still open. Radabet’s advice is the sensible one for every bookmaker: if no prompt comes, use the paybill shown on screen rather than trying the prompt again and again.

USSD menus

Some bookmakers run their own USSD code, which pulls up the M-Pesa PIN prompt from a basic phone without data. SportPesa uses *790#, option 4, then the amount. Pepeta lists *457# for deposits and withdrawals. On Airtel, betPawa is reached through *334#, which the Airtel Money guide covers.

SMS

SMS is mostly used for betting rather than paying in. SportPesa takes bets on 79079 and OdiBets on 29680, but both still expect the deposit itself to arrive by paybill. ChezaCash is the one bookmaker seen offering an SMS deposit command: D#Amount sent to 29030 brings up the M-Pesa prompt.

What happens if the account number is wrong?

Usually nothing is lost. If the money came from the registered number, the bookmaker can still find it through that number, and the deposit is often credited without any help. When a deposit has not appeared after a few minutes, the first step is to refresh the balance, and the second is to send the bookmaker’s support team the full M-Pesa confirmation message, which carries the transaction code they need to trace it.

The deposits that really do get stuck are the ones sent from a different number from the one on the betting account. Those usually need the punter to prove the payment is theirs, and the M-Pesa message is again the evidence that settles it. Keeping that message until the balance updates is the single most useful habit for anyone who deposits by paybill.

What if money goes to the wrong paybill?

This is harder to undo than most punters expect. Safaricom’s do-it-yourself reversal, which works by forwarding the M-Pesa message to 456 within 24 hours, covers only “Safaricom-to-Safaricom (P2P)” transfers and airtime. It does not cover payments to a paybill.

A payment to the wrong business number therefore has to be recovered from that business, or through Safaricom’s customer care, and it moves only as fast as the receiving business co-operates. If the wrong number belongs to another bookmaker, the money may simply sit unclaimed on an account that does not exist. Checking the business name on the confirmation step before entering the PIN takes two seconds, and it is the only real protection here.

How to tell a genuine betting paybill from a fake one

The only reliable source for a bookmaker’s paybill is the bookmaker itself: its deposit page, its help pages or the SMS it sends at registration. SportPesa, for example, sends its paybill in the second registration message. A “new paybill” that arrives through a WhatsApp group, a Telegram tipster channel or a social media comment should be ignored, however official it looks, because a genuine bookmaker announces a change on its own site and app.

The bookmaker’s name in the M-Pesa confirmation step is the second check. A tipster who asks for payment to a paybill in exchange for “fixed” matches is not a bookmaker at all, and no licensed operator sells fixed results.

Paybill numbers that no longer work

Old lists of betting paybills still circulate, and several of the brands on them are no longer taking Kenyan customers. Betway’s Kenyan site does not load, Betsafe’s domain no longer resolves, and BetLion’s site was unreachable when checked. A paybill copied from an old list for any of these brands should not be used, even if M-Pesa accepts the payment.

Several bookmakers in the Scout Report publish no paybill at all. KessBet, Megapari, GoldPari, 22Bet and Yellowbet publish no paybill on their public pages and point to the cashier instead, and Melbet and HelaBet show payment details only after logging in. For any of these, the cashier screen is the only safe source, and a number found on another website should not be used. The reviews page covers every bookmaker in the ranking.

Paybill FAQ