Use Common Cents To Avoid A Journey Of Unnecessary Suffering

Let me paint you a picture. It’s a Tuesday afternoon. The sun is out, the matatu conductors are shouting their usual poetry, and somewhere in Nairobi, a grown adult with a smartphone, a functioning brain, and a fully loaded KCB App is about to embark on an odyssey so unnecessary it deserves its own soundtrack.

The mission? Pay a KPLC bill.

The method? Absolutely not the sensible one.

Here’s what actually happens. Our hero opens the KCB App, a marvel of modern banking that can pay the bill in four taps, stares at it like it just insulted his mother, then navigates to “Send Money to M-Pesa.” He waits for the transfer. He waits some more. He checks if it’s “processing” the way we check if rice is ready, by opening the pot every thirty seconds as if staring will speed up starch. Eventually, the money lands in Mpesa. Then, and only then, does he open the Mpesa app, select “Pay Bill,” painstakingly re-enter the KPLC paybill number he definitely has memorized from years of doing exactly this, punch in the account number again, and pay.

Two apps. Two logins. Two sets of numbers typed. One transaction that should have taken 45 seconds now resembles a small construction project. Somewhere, a KCB software engineer who built the direct “Pay Bills” button is sitting alone at lunch, unselected, like the last samosa in a cooling box nobody trusts.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not common sense. This is common cents; literally moving coins from pocket to pocket for the theatrical pleasure of it, like a magician who insists on three unnecessary shuffles before revealing a card everyone already saw.

Let’s talk about the till payment situation, which is somehow even more dramatic. KCB Till 522533 exists. It is free. You could pay a merchant using it directly from your KCB App faster than you can say “sasa, niaje.” Instead, some people will transfer to M-Pesa, absorb whatever transaction cost lurks in that transfer, then pay the till from M-Pesa, like buying a suit, then paying someone to iron a wrinkle into it before wearing it. Why pay for stress you could get for free?

And don’t even get me started on the eCitizen crowd. There is a button. It says “Bills.” It has been there. It is not shy. It is not playing hide and seek. It will not disappear if you look at it directly. Yet people will still Google “how to pay eCitizen via Mpesa,” write down a paybill number on the back of a matatu receipt, misplace the receipt, panic, and start the whole process again from the beginning — like Sisyphus, but with 4G data bundles instead of a boulder.

Even the ushering committee of alternatives, dial *522#, sits there quietly, offline-friendly, requiring no data bundle, no app update prompt, no “storage almost full” warning interrupting your moment of financial responsibility. And yet.

Perhaps this is less about technology and more about the human condition. Perhaps we, as a species, are addicted to the scenic route. We could take the highway, but no, we take the dusty backroad past three roadblocks and a stalled lorry, just because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Perhaps unnecessary bank hopping is the adult equivalent of taking the long way home from school because there was a shop that sold sweets on credit.

Or maybe — and I say this with love, some people simply enjoy the ritual. The tapping. The waiting. The slight thrill of watching a balance drop in one app and rise in another, like a magic trick you perform for an audience of one: yourself, mildly impressed, at 2:47 PM on a Tuesday.

So here’s a public service announcement, delivered with the enthusiasm of an aunt at a wedding microphone: your KCB App can pay the bill directly. It can pay the till directly. It can settle eCitizen without a single detour through M-Pesa’s velvet ropes. And if the app itself feels like too much commitment, *522# is right there, humble and free, like the friend who never asks for anything but is always available at 11 PM.

Save the transfer fees. Save the taps. Save yourself the emotional rollercoaster of “pending transaction” anxiety.

Use your common cents. Your wallet and your blood pressure will thank you.

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