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Rent by Shopika

Terms of use

These terms are the agreement between you and Shopika Enterprise Ltd for using Rent by Shopika. Using the platform means you accept them.

Last updated 16 September 2026

Who may use Rent by Shopika

You must be 18 or older and able to enter into a contract. Give true details, keep your password to yourself, and use the platform only for a real property, a real tenancy or a real house search.

What Rent by Shopika is, and what it is not

Shopika keeps the records of a tenancy and routes a payment to the landlord's own account. That is all it does.

  • We are not your landlord and we do not own or manage any property.
  • We are not an estate agent and we do not act for either side in a tenancy.
  • We are not a bank. We hold no money for anybody except what you choose to put in your own purse, below.
  • Rent and bills go straight into the landlord's own Paybill, Till or bank account. Shopika never holds your rent and takes no commission from rent.
  • The M-Pesa prompt is signed by Shopika's own Safaricom account, but the money goes to the landlord's account. Safaricom's confirmation is what marks a payment confirmed.
  • A payment the tenant reports themselves — a bank transfer, cash, an M-Pesa payment made outside the app — is recorded straight away and the landlord is told at once, by text, with a link that reverses it in one press if the money never reached them. The receipt says plainly that it rests on the tenant's own report and that nobody confirmed it. We do this because most landlords here never open the app, and a tenant who has paid should not have to chase anybody to make their own records true.
  • A landlord who would rather confirm each payment themselves can ask us to set a waiting period for their property, and nothing is recorded until they answer or it passes.
  • Electricity token payments go to Kenya Power's Paybill 888880 for your own meter.

The tenancy agreement is between the landlord and the tenant. Rent, deposit, notice, repairs and who lives in the house are agreed between them, not with us.

Your purse

A purse is the one place where Shopika holds your money, and only because you put it there. It exists so rent can be filled bit by bit, and so airtime, a bundle or an electricity bill can be paid without another M-Pesa prompt.

  • The money in a purse stays yours. It is not a deposit with us, it earns nothing, and we never lend it, invest it or use it for anything else.
  • A purse holds at most KES 50,000. We will refuse to add more rather than hold more.
  • A purse is for spending inside Rent by Shopika: rent, electricity, airtime and bundles. There is no cash withdrawal to your own M-Pesa.
  • If you want your balance back — you are moving out, or you simply changed your mind — email support@shopika.com and we will return it to the M-Pesa number on your account. We may ask you to confirm your identity first.
  • Money you set aside for a rent plan cannot be spent on anything else until the plan is sent on or stopped. Stopping a plan frees it again.
  • Every movement of a purse is written down and shown to you, and nothing in it can be edited afterwards. A purchase that fails is refunded to the purse, with the reason.
  • We may put a purse on hold if we are required to, or if we have good reason to believe it is being used for fraud. We will tell you, and your money is not ours while it is held.

What a landlord or manager promises

  • You have the right to let the property, and the documents you upload to prove it are genuine.
  • Your listings are honest. A house is listed only when it is truly vacant, and you confirm the vacancy yourself.
  • The Paybill, Till or bank account you show tenants is yours, or the landlord's, and you are entitled to receive rent into it.
  • You confirm or reject a payment a tenant reports promptly, so their statement stays true.
  • A deposit belongs to the tenant. You hold it, you account for it, and you return what is due when the tenancy ends, as your agreement says.
  • You handle tenants' details, and anything you can reveal on this platform, carefully and only for running the tenancy.

What a tenant promises

  • The details you give about yourself are true.
  • Your account is yours. Do not share your password, and do not let somebody else use your account.
  • What you report about a payment is true. Do not report a payment you did not make.
  • You pay to the account shown in the app, and nowhere else.

Verification and suspension

Before a property's houses can appear in house search, Shopika checks documents the owner uploads. A badge says what was checked and nothing more. See how verification works.

We can refuse a verification request, and we can suspend or remove a listing, a property or an account, when there are signs of fraud, when a listing is not honest, when the documents do not hold up, or when these terms are broken. We tell the owner when we do. A suspended property can send fresh documents and ask us to look again.

Money and disputes

Because your rent goes into the landlord's own account, a disagreement about money is between the landlord and the tenant. We are not the ones holding it, so we cannot refund, hold or release it.

What we can do is give you the records: the payment, the M-Pesa reference, the time, what it was allocated to, and the receipt. Both sides can see the same statement. Ask us and we will help you read it.

What we do not promise

  • We do not promise that you will find a house, or that a landlord will find a tenant.
  • We do not promise that a house will still be vacant when you get there, though a vacancy older than seven days stops being shown.
  • We check the documents an owner sends us. We do not inspect houses, and we cannot promise that a person will behave well.
  • The platform can be down for maintenance, and M-Pesa or a network can fail. We work to keep it available, not to guarantee it.

Our responsibility, honestly stated

If we get something wrong, we will fix it. If our mistake causes you a loss, we will deal with it fairly and under Kenyan law, which sets what we are responsible for.

What we are not responsible for is what somebody else does: a landlord who takes a deposit and disappears, a tenant who does not pay, a payment you sent to an account that was not the one in the app, or a viewing you attended against our advice. We also cannot answer for Safaricom, Kenya Power or your network when their service fails.

Nothing here takes away a right the law gives you as a consumer.

Price

Tenants never pay Shopika anything. Landlords and managers are free during the pilot. When charging begins it will be KES 50 per occupied house per month, and every landlord gets at least 30 days' notice by email and in the app before the first charge. The full position is on the pricing page.

Closing an account

You can stop using Rent by Shopika whenever you like, and you can ask us to close your account. Records of money that has already moved stay, because they are the proof both sides may need. We may close an account that is used for fraud.

Changes to these terms

We will update these terms as the product grows. The date at the top says when they last changed, and we will tell you by email and in the app before a change that affects you takes effect.

Law and contact

These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya, and the courts of Kenya deal with any dispute about them.

Rent by Shopika is a product of Shopika Enterprise Ltd. Write to support@shopika.com or call or WhatsApp +254 712 095 031.