Pay electricity — token or postpaid

Are you paying a light bill or buying a prepaid token from abroad? Prepaid tokens and postpaid bills, against your meter number.

This is the guide where one step matters more than all the others: the name that comes back after you enter the meter or account number.

Everything else here is ordinary. That one check is the difference between paying a household's bill and permanently crediting a stranger's meter.

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 Electricity. Home → country → Electricity → provider → meter/account → lookup → Pay.
7. Enter the recipient. The meter or account number is looked up and the registered name is shown before you can pay. If the name is not the one you expect, stop — the number is wrong, and paying it would credit a stranger's meter.
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. A prepaid token on the receipt, or a settled postpaid account with the receipt as proof.

What to expect

The receipt carries the token itself for prepaid meters. Screenshot it if you like, but the receipt is the canonical copy. History keeps the meter, the provider and the state, which is what you need months later when somebody asks whether a month was paid. Store credit on Home moves by the amount plus the fee, and by nothing else.

Refusals reverse themselves and announce it. Unknowns do not, and they are not an invitation to try again — they are an instruction to wait. On this walkthrough that matters at the last step: once you have paid for electricity, the receipt is the thing to read, not the Pay button to press again.

What goes wrong

• Skipping past the returned name because the number looks about right.
• Choosing the prepaid product when the household is on postpaid, or the reverse.
• Reading the meter number off an old photograph rather than the meter.
• Deleting the receipt after screenshotting the token.

What you will see

These come straight out of the app. Nothing has been redrawn to look tidier than it is. These are the screens this page refers to when it says pay electricity — token or postpaid.

• Choosing an electricity provider on Kpali before paying
• Entering a meter number and the amount on the Kpali electricity screen

A worked example

A worked example. The prepaid meter in the family house needs a token. You set the country, open Electricity, and choose the prepaid product — not the postpaid one, because they are different products at the same provider. You type the meter number, reading it off the meter rather than from memory, and wait for the name. The name that comes back is your father's. That is the moment the purchase becomes safe: had it come back as a stranger, the number would have been wrong and paying it would have credited their meter permanently. You choose an amount, read the total on the review sheet, pay, and the token prints on the receipt. You send them the token; the receipt stays in History with it.

If it does not work

The name that comes back is not the one you expected. Stop. The number is wrong, and paying it credits a stranger's meter permanently. Re-read the number off the meter itself.

The provider is listed twice. Prepaid and postpaid are separate products at the same provider. Pick the one the household is actually on.

The token did not appear. It is on the receipt in History, not sent by SMS. Open the order and read it there.

The token was rejected at the meter. Type it exactly as printed, without spaces. If it still fails, send support the receipt reference — do not buy a second token first.

Pay will not proceed. Amount plus fee exceeds store credit. Nothing was sent to the provider.

Worth knowing

One habit is worth forming with prepaid meters specifically: send the token and keep the receipt, rather than sending a screenshot and deleting the order. The token on the receipt is the canonical copy, and it stays in History indefinitely. Screenshots get cleared, forwarded, compressed and lost, usually at the moment somebody needs the token re-read.

Where this works

Nigeria's prepaid meters are the best-known case, but electricity runs across the wider catalogue including South Africa. Coverage for electricity 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 Electricity page.