Payments overview

SMS YANU is prepaid. You add money or credit first, then you send.

Method	Status	How it works
Bank or mobile money transfer	Available	You pay and send the reference. Staff check and approve.
Online (Airtel Money, TNM Mpamba, card)	Available	Pay from your account. Your balance updates when the payment is confirmed.

Currency

Prices and balances are in MWK by default.
USD is supported for customers who pay in dollars.

Rules that protect your money

Each payment reference is credited once. Sending the same reference again does not add credit twice.
Online payments are checked with the payment provider by our server. We never credit a payment just because a browser came back from the payment page.
Every credit shows in your history (dashboard transactions or SMPP portal Credit history).

For operators

Payments are off until switched on: PAYMENTS_ENABLED=false by default.
Manual top-ups and their bank or mobile money details are set by an admin in payment settings.
Online payment stays off until gateway keys exist. See Online payments.

Two places to top up

You use	Your balance is	Top up at
SMS dashboard and HTTP API	Money (MWK or USD)	Top up at auth.smsyanu.com
SMPP binds	SMS credits	Top up in the SMPP portal

SMPP top-up requests are reviewed in the SMPP portal: by staff for direct clients, by the reseller for a reseller's clients. See Credits and balance.

How online payments reach SMPP binds

The SMPP service has a server-to-server endpoint for confirmed payments from the account service: POST https://smpp.smsyanu.com/api/v1/internal/credit with the X-Internal-Key header. It credits a bind or a reseller pool once per payment reference. POST /api/v1/internal/debit reverses a credit by its reference.

To be confirmed

The account service does not call the SMPP credit endpoint yet. Until it does, online payments and account-service manual top-ups credit the SMS dashboard balance only, and SMPP credit is bought through the SMPP portal.