Business Payroll

Send bulk payments to staff and contractors from the merchant dashboard — manual entry, CSV upload, templates, and recurring schedules.

4 min read

Overview

Payroll lets a Danipa merchant pay many people in a single batch — staff, contractors, suppliers. You build a recipient list, review the totals, authorise once, and the platform processes each payment individually. Open it from the Payroll page in the merchant dashboard.

Requirement: You need a registered Danipa merchant account (KYB-verified). The KYC tier system used for personal accounts doesn't apply here. See Merchant Dashboard for registration.

Build a batch

A batch is a named group of recipients you'll pay together. There are two ways to build one.

Manual entry

1. Open Payroll and tap New batch.
2. Give the batch a name (e.g. "April salaries", "Q2 contractors").
3. Tap Add recipient for each person:
   • Name
   • Phone number (with country code)
   • Provider (e.g. MTN_MOMO)
   • Amount
   • Reference (optional — e.g. "April salary", "Invoice #1042")
4. Save the batch.

CSV upload

1. Tap Upload CSV and download the template if you don't already have one.
2. Fill the CSV with these columns:

3. Upload the file. Danipa parses every row and flags malformed entries before saving.

Review and process

Once the batch is built, it sits in DRAFT status until you process it.

1. Open the batch — review the recipient list and the totals.
2. Tap Process payroll.
3. Authorise with your transaction PIN.

The batch moves to PROCESSING. Each item starts as QUEUED and progresses through:

When every item has reached a terminal status the batch settles into one of:

You'll get a notification when the batch settles.

Retry failed items

If a batch settles as PARTIALLY_FAILED:

1. Open the batch and tap Failed items.
2. Each failed item shows the provider's reason.
3. Common reasons and fixes:

4. Tap Retry failed to reprocess only the failed items in the batch.

Templates

Save a recipient list once and reuse it:

1. Build a batch.
2. From the batch detail screen, tap Save as template.
3. Give the template a name.

Next time you want to run the same payroll, open Payroll → Templates, tap the template, edit any amounts that have changed, and process the batch.

Recurring schedules

You can run a payroll automatically on a recurring schedule.

1. Open the batch or template.
2. Tap Set schedule.
3. Pick a frequency — Weekly, Bi-weekly, or Monthly.
4. Pick the start date (and optional end date).
5. Confirm.

Each scheduled run copies the recipient list and processes a fresh batch. You can view, pause, or delete schedules from Payroll → Scheduled.

Make sure your merchant balance is funded before each scheduled run. A schedule whose run can't be funded ends up in PARTIALLY_FAILED or FAILED and you'll need to retry once the balance is topped up.

Batch history

Open Payroll → History for a list of every past batch, with the date, name, total, success count, and fail count. Tap any batch for the full breakdown — you can re-download a delivery confirmation per item from there.

Notifications

Each delivered item triggers a notification to the recipient with the amount and your reference (subject to their notification preferences). You as the merchant get a single batch-completion notification when processing finishes.

Tips

• Validate CSVs locally first. Common mistakes — missing country codes, wrong provider strings, blank amounts — are easier to fix in your spreadsheet than in the dashboard.
• Use templates for recurring lists. Faster than re-uploading and reduces human error.
• Reconcile from the batch report. The batch detail page is the canonical record of who got paid and when — store the export with your accounting records.
• Keep your merchant balance ahead of payroll. A failed run is recoverable but disruptive.