How can we help?

Pesa Radar is an Android app that reads the M-PESA and bank SMS alerts on your phone and turns them into something you can understand: transactions grouped by person or business, weekly trends, and a feed of plain-language insights. It isn't a budgeting tool. It helps you see where your money has already gone.

1. Install Pesa Radar from Google Play.
2. Follow the short welcome and pick what you care about most: people, spending or saving.
3. Allow SMS access so the app can find your transaction messages.
4. Optionally allow notifications for insights.
5. Wait while the app scans your messages, then open your dashboard.

The first scan can take a little longer if you have a large inbox.

No. Pesa Radar is built only for Android phones, and only for Kenya. It understands the SMS formats of Kenyan M-PESA and banks, so messages from other countries won't be recognised.

Your transaction history already exists as SMS alerts. Pesa Radar reads them so you don't have to type anything in. Android's SMS permission covers your whole inbox, but the app only processes messages from recognised senders (such as M-PESA and supported banks) and ignores the rest. Pesa Radar is read-only: it can't send messages or move money.

Available now: M-PESA, Equity Bank, KCB, Co-op Bank and Family Bank.

Coming soon: Absa, NCBA and Standard Chartered.

Want another bank? Let us know.

A transaction may be missing if:

• the message came from a bank or sender that isn't supported yet;
• the message format changed or doesn't include a clear amount, name or reference. Pesa Radar skips these rather than guess;
• the message was deleted from your phone before the app scanned it.

Try pulling down on the dashboard to refresh. If it's still missing, email us the sender name and the message with personal details removed, and we'll look into it.

A group collects every transaction with the same person, till or business. Instead of a long list of messages you see one entry showing how often you pay them, how much in total, and how it's changing over time.

The same recipient can appear under slightly different names in different messages. Pesa Radar merges close matches automatically, but it plays it safe when it isn't sure. You can edit a group from the dashboard. Duplicate messages are never counted twice: transactions with the same reference and amount are recognised as the same.

Yes. Pin the groups you care about so they stay easy to reach, and hide the ones you don't want cluttering your dashboard. Hidden groups can be shown again, and you can search, sort, and filter by date, amount or source.

Insights are short notes such as a morning brief, daily review, weekly report, or a heads-up when spending jumps. They're worked out on your phone using straightforward calculations on your own transactions. Pesa Radar doesn't use generative AI, and your data isn't sent anywhere to produce them.

Insights are delivered as local notifications. Pesa Radar avoids sending too many and respects quiet times. You can turn notifications off any time in Android Settings → Apps → Pesa Radar → Notifications.

Backup is optional. If you sign in and choose to back up, Pesa Radar saves a copy of your profile, transaction groups and app data to your account in the cloud. The copy is checked when it's restored to make sure nothing was corrupted. If you never back up, nothing leaves your phone.

Install Pesa Radar on the new phone, sign in with the same account you used to back up, and choose restore. Your groups and history come back, and new messages continue to be picked up from then on. Remember to back up on your old phone first.

An account is used for cloud backup and restore. You can sign in with email and password, or with Google or Facebook. Your transactions are still read and analysed on your phone.

On your phone: go to Android Settings → Apps → Pesa Radar → Storage → Clear data, or uninstall the app.

In the cloud: delete your account from the account section of the app, or email hivesable@gmail.com from your registered address. See our Privacy Policy for details.

No. We don't sell your data or share it with advertisers. Read the full details in the Privacy Policy.

• Check SMS permission is allowed: Android Settings → Apps → Pesa Radar → Permissions → SMS.
• Make sure the messages are from a supported sender (see the list above).
• Give the first scan a few minutes if you have many messages, then pull down on the dashboard to refresh.

• On Android 13 and later, allow notifications in Settings → Apps → Pesa Radar → Notifications.
• Some phones restrict background apps to save battery. Set Pesa Radar to "Unrestricted" or "Not optimised" in its battery settings.
• Insights are paused during quiet hours, and only sent when there is something worth noting.