Buy and send airtime

Are you sending airtime to family across countries? Top up any phone — all it needs is the number.

Sending airtime is the shortest path Kpali has from money to a result somebody else can feel. Two minutes, one number, and a phone that works again.

What follows assumes you are starting from nothing — no app, no store credit — because that is the honest starting point for most people reading it.

Step by step

1. Install Kpali. The Android package is app.kpali; Kpali is on the App Store for iPhone. There is no browser version — money screens gate on the device.
2. Fund store credit. Open Add money. Choose USDT or USDC, then the network — TRC-20 credits after twenty confirmations, BEP-20 after fifteen. The warning about the network is above the address because sending on the wrong chain cannot be undone by anyone. The minimum is shown before the address.
3. Decide whose credit this is. Your email in the email field notifies you. Somebody else's email credits them instead, and they are told when it lands.
4. Wait for Home. Store credit appears when the deposit confirms. An address is not money.
5. Set the country. The country decides what the catalogue can sell. Home is where it starts.
6. Open Airtime. Home → country → Airtime → network → number → amount → Pay.
7. Enter the recipient. A mobile number. There is no lookup for this product, so read it back carefully.
8. Read the review sheet. It states the recipient and what leaves your wallet, fee included, before anything is charged.
9. Pay. If store credit cannot cover the amount plus the fee, Pay does not proceed and nothing is sent to a provider.
10. Keep the receipt. The credit lands on the number. The receipt names the number, the network, the amount and the state.

What to expect

Home shows store credit before and after, so the difference is the purchase. History lists the top-up with the network and the last digits of the number. The receipt is the record that survives: it says what was bought, for whom, and whether money moved.

A definite refusal reverses the debit and says nothing has been charged. An unknown outcome stays on the receipt — do not retry it, because retrying an unknown is how one purchase becomes two charges. On this walkthrough that matters at the last step: once you have paid for airtime, the receipt is the thing to read, not the Pay button to press again.

What goes wrong

• A number typed from memory rather than read from a contact card.
• The country picker left on the country you are in, instead of the country the number belongs to.
• A network chosen from habit on a number that has since been ported.
• Closing the app before the receipt renders, then wondering whether it went through.

What you will see

These are the actual screens, captured from the app rather than drawn for this website. These are the screens this page refers to when it says buy and send airtime. Both the light and the dark theme appear, because the app follows your phone.

• Kpali airtime screen with the phone number, amount and what leaves your wallet (light theme)
• Choosing a mobile network for an airtime top-up on Kpali in dark mode (dark theme)

A worked example

A worked example. You are in Manchester; your mother's line in Lagos is about to go quiet. You open Kpali, set the country picker to Nigeria, and open Airtime. You choose her network — checking first that the line has not been ported, because that catches more people than any other step — and enter the number in international form, without the leading zero. You choose an amount in naira. The review sheet shows the amount, the fee and what will actually leave your store credit in USD. You read the number back once, press Pay, and the receipt opens. Total elapsed time: under a minute, most of it spent reading the number back. She does nothing at all, and the credit is on her line.

If it does not work

The number is rejected as invalid. Drop the leading zero and use the international form for the country you selected. A Lagos line entered as 0803… will not validate when the country picker says Nigeria and expects the number without it.

The network list does not include theirs. The number may have been ported. Ask which network actually carries it now rather than which one issued it, then pick that.

It says the top-up completed but they say nothing arrived. Give the operator a few minutes and have them restart the handset. If History still shows it delivered an hour later, send support the receipt reference.

Pay will not press. Store credit does not cover the amount plus the fee. The review sheet shows the total; top up the difference and try again.

You sent to the wrong number. Airtime lands where it is sent and cannot be recalled. This is why the review sheet exists, and why it is worth the three seconds.

Where this works

Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States are the corridors people ask for most, but the country picker carries the full catalogue. Coverage for airtime is decided per country and shown before you pay, so you find out what is possible while you are still choosing rather than after you have committed. Where it cannot be delivered today, the app says so with a reason attached.

The full picture — who it suits, what decides availability, what it costs and every question people ask — is on the Airtime page.