Integrating Orange Money, Moov Money or Wave into a website or app

Why is mobile money unavoidable in Burkina Faso?

In Burkina Faso, a large share of everyday payments goes through the phone: Orange Money, Moov Money and, more recently, Wave are used to pay bills, send money and pay merchants. For an e-commerce site, a ticketing platform, a school collecting fees or a delivery app, offering card payment alone means excluding most customers.

Integrating mobile money is not just displaying a deposit number, though. A professional integration must confirm the payment automatically, update the order and leave a usable accounting trail.

What are the integration options?

Option 1: the operator's direct API

Each operator offers, under conditions, a merchant API to initiate a payment and receive a confirmation. Pros: no intermediary, fees negotiated directly. Cons: one contract and onboarding per operator, uneven documentation, and as many integrations to maintain as operators accepted.

Option 2: a payment aggregator

An aggregator bundles several operators (and sometimes cards) behind one API and one contract. This is usually the fastest route for an SME: a single integration, a consolidated dashboard, grouped settlements. In exchange, an extra commission and a dependency on a third party whose reliability, licensing and support quality must be checked.

Option 3: semi-manual payment with verification

The customer pays to a merchant number and enters the transaction reference; an internal operator or a script checks the statement. This works for very low volumes or a pilot, but it does not scale and opens the door to errors and fraud.

How does an integration unfold?

1. Scoping: which operators, which amounts, which use cases (one-off payment, subscription, refund)?
2. Contracting: opening a merchant account with the operator or aggregator, providing company documents (trade register, tax ID, manager's ID).
3. Test environment: most providers offer a sandbox to simulate successful, declined or expired payments.
4. Development: server-side payment initiation, redirect or phone-number entry, listening for notifications.
5. Reconciliation: each confirmed transaction updates the order, the invoice and, ideally, the accounting entry in your ERP.
6. Acceptance and go-live: real tests with small amounts, then switch-over.

Which technical practices should you follow?

• Never trust the browser: a payment status is confirmed by a server-to-server notification (webhook) or a verification call, never by the user simply landing on the "thank you" page.
• Idempotency: a notification may arrive twice; your system must process a transaction only once.
• Timeout handling: a mobile money payment can stay "pending" for several minutes while the customer enters their PIN. Plan an intermediate state and a retry.
• Logging: keep transaction IDs, timestamps and raw responses for disputes.
• Key security: API credentials stay server-side, in environment variables, never in source code or in the mobile app.
• Compliance: phone numbers are personal data; limit their collection and retention.

Which common pitfalls should you avoid?

• Picking an aggregator on fees alone, without testing its support or settlement delays.
• Leaving refunds and partial payments out of the specification.
• Not planning accounting reconciliation: hundreds of unreconciled micro-payments quickly become unmanageable.
• Displaying every operator when only one is actually contracted.
• Neglecting the experience on low-end phones and slow networks, which remains the majority case.

How long does it take and what budget should you plan?

As an indication, an aggregator integration on an existing site often takes a few days to a few weeks of development, depending on the complexity of the flow and the reconciliation. Direct integration with several operators takes longer, mostly because of the contractual steps. Transaction fees are negotiated with each provider and depend on volume.

Which option for which profile?

• Small merchant or association: aggregator, simple integration, weekly manual reconciliation.
• E-commerce SME or school: aggregator or direct API, automatic reconciliation with the ERP or management software.
• High-volume platform: direct APIs, redundancy across providers, real-time monitoring.

Digital Station designs and integrates mobile money payment flows for websites, apps and business software in Burkina Faso. Describe your project and we will point you to the most suitable option.