Compare
Ethiopian payment gateways, side by side.
Chapa, SantimPay, ArifPay, and us. One of these four is built for the way Ethiopian customers actually pay, and the table below shows you which. Rails, fees, settlement, and developer experience, as of August 2026. Where a provider doesn't publish a figure, we say so instead of guessing.
| Gateway | What it is | Rails | Fees | Settlement | Developer experience | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payous | Receipt-based bank-transfer gateway | CBE, Telebirr, and Abyssinia bank transfers. The customer pays in their bank app and uploads the receipt. | Free. No setup, monthly, or per-transaction fees. Paid advanced features are planned for the future; the current service stays free. | The customer transfers straight to your bank account. No third party holds your funds, so there is no settlement delay and no gateway cut. | REST API: create an order, get a payment link, receive an HMAC-SHA256 signed webhook (retried for 24h). No business license needed to start. | Online businesses whose customers pay by bank transfer and need verified, webhook-driven confirmation. |
| ChapaPayo vs Chapa → | Card + mobile-money payment gateway | Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, mobile wallets (Telebirr, CBE Birr, Amole), bank transfers. 5+ currencies. | 2.5% domestic, 1% international per successful transaction. No setup or monthly fees; volume discounts. (Official pricing page) | Automatic settlement within 24 hours. (Official pricing page) | Documented API with sandbox and webhooks. SDKs for PHP/Laravel, Node, Flutter, Java. WooCommerce plugin. | Merchants who want cards and wallets in one gateway, or need international payments. |
| SantimPayPayo vs SantimPay → | Bank-backed POS, QR and gateway operator | Bank accounts, digital wallets, and mobile devices. Interoperable QR and POS with 6 partner banks, Telebirr, and M-Pesa. | Not published on the official site. | Not published on the official site. | Gateway page links to developer docs, but they returned HTTP 403 when checked. No public SDKs found. | In-store and QR payments, especially with the Visa-backed POS rollout (up to 100,000 terminals over five years). |
| ArifPayPayo vs ArifPay → | POS terminals + payment gateway | Bank transfer, M-Pesa, Mastercard, Visa, mobile money. SDK DirectPay covers Telebirr, Awash Wallet, and Awash bank transfer. | Transaction-based, custom pricing. Contact sales. No public rate. | 1–2 business days, plus an instant-payout capability. (Third-party reported) | Developer portal with sandbox and webhooks. SDKs for PHP, Node/TypeScript, C#/.NET, Python, Laravel. | In-person POS payments and on-demand/ride-hailing style integrations. |
Facts checked on 18 August 2026. Figures marked “official” come from the provider's own pricing or docs page. Figures marked “third-party reported” come from aggregators and press and may be stale. Sources per gateway:
- Chapa: Chapa pricing · Chapa developer docs · NBE-licensed payment system operators
- SantimPay: SantimPay · Addis Fortune — SantimPay financials · Shega — Visa and SantimPay POS rollout
- ArifPay: ArifPay developer docs · PaymentProviders.io — Chapa vs ArifPay · Addis Fortune — first fintech payment operator license
The short version
Why merchants start with Payo.
No third party in the money path
Your customer pays your bank account directly. Payo doesn't sit on Chapa, SantimPay, or anyone else, so there's no settlement delay and no gateway taking a cut of your revenue.
Free, and honest about the future
The current service costs nothing: no setup, no monthly, no per-transaction fees. Advanced features are coming in the future and those will be paid. What you use today stays free.
Start today, not after approval
Sign up, get an API key, POST an order. No business license needed to start accepting payments. No weeks of waiting on documentation and account verification.
Deep dives
The case against, one gateway at a time.
Payo vs Chapa: which payment gateway fits your Ethiopian business?
Why Chapa's 2.5% cut, license-verification onboarding, and redirect-style checkout make it the wrong fit for bank-transfer merchants.
Read the comparison →Payo vs SantimPay: comparing Ethiopian payment gateways
Why SantimPay's unpublished pricing, approval-gated onboarding, and POS-first focus make it the wrong gateway for online bank-transfer payments.
Read the comparison →Payo vs ArifPay: digital payments compared
Why ArifPay's custom pricing, 1–2 day settlement, and approval gate are the wrong terms for online bank-transfer payments.
Read the comparison →FAQ
Questions people ask before they pick.
Which Ethiopian payment gateway should I choose?
Start with Payo if your customers pay by bank transfer: CBE, Telebirr, or Abyssinia. It's the only one of the four that verifies the receipt before your webhook fires, and it's free. Add Chapa only if you need cards or international payments. Add SantimPay or ArifPay only if you run physical stores.
Are these fees and settlement times still accurate?
We checked every figure in as of August 2026 against the provider's own site where one exists. Only Chapa publishes a full public fee schedule. Where a provider publishes nothing, the table says so. Treat any other number you read elsewhere as unverified.
Can I run Payo alongside another gateway on the same checkout?
Yes. Payo is one payment option on your checkout, not a platform lock-in, and it doesn't sit on top of another gateway, so trying it costs nothing. Show Chapa for card and wallet customers. Show Payo for bank-transfer customers. Both fire webhooks into your backend.
Do any of these gateways verify receipts?
Payo is built entirely around it: the customer transfers from their bank app, uploads the receipt, and our OCR plus human review confirms the payment before your webhook fires. The other three focus on cards, wallets, or in-store POS. None of them is built around the bank-transfer receipt flow.