Terms and Conditions
Draft for review. These terms must be reviewed by a Kenyan advocate, and the highlighted details completed, before Kodia accepts any payment.
1. About these terms
These terms apply when you visit kodia.co.ke, use the Kodia app, pay rent through Kodia or use Rent Cover. Kodia is operated by registered company name, a company registered in Kenya under registration number company registration number, of registered physical and postal address. In these terms, "Kodia", "we", "us" and "our" mean that company. "You" means the person using Kodia.
By creating a Kodia account or making a payment through Kodia, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use Kodia.
2. Where Kodia is today
Kodia is in development. At present the website only describes the service, and no payments, accounts or Rent Cover are available. Sections 3 to 8 describe how the service will work once it launches. We will tell you before any of it goes live, and you only become bound by those sections when you open an account.
3. Who can use Kodia
To open an account you must:
- be at least 18 years old;
- live in Kenya;
- have an active M-Pesa account registered in your own name;
- give us true, complete and current information, and keep it up to date.
You may hold one personal account. We may ask you to verify your identity, for example with your national ID or passport, before you can pay rent or apply for Rent Cover. We may decline to open an account where we cannot verify you or where the law requires us to.
4. Your account
Keep your phone, PIN, passwords and one-time codes private. Kodia staff will never ask for your M-Pesa PIN. Tell us immediately at support email address if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for payments made from your account before you tell us, unless they happened because we failed to take reasonable care.
5. Paying rent
How a payment works
When you make a payment, you instruct us to send the amount you choose from your M-Pesa account to the recipient you name: an M-Pesa number, a Buy Goods till, or a paybill with an account number. Before you confirm, we show you the amount, any fee and, where M-Pesa provides it, the registered name of the recipient. Check these details carefully. A payment is complete when M-Pesa confirms that the recipient has received it, and we then add a receipt to your account.
Your responsibilities
- You are responsible for the recipient details and amount you enter.
- If you pay the wrong recipient because of details you entered, we will help you request a reversal through Safaricom's process, but we cannot guarantee that the money will be recovered.
- M-Pesa transaction and balance limits set by Safaricom apply to every payment.
Failed or delayed payments
Payments depend on M-Pesa. If M-Pesa is unavailable, a payment may be delayed or fail. If a payment fails, the money is not sent to the recipient, and any amount taken from your M-Pesa account is returned through M-Pesa's own process. Your use of M-Pesa is also governed by Safaricom's M-Pesa terms.
Your tenancy
Kodia is not a party to your tenancy. Questions about the rent amount, deposits, repairs, service charges or notice are between you and your landlord. A Kodia receipt shows that a payment was made through Kodia. It does not change the terms of your tenancy.
6. Fees
Kodia charges a fee on payments made through the service. The fee is shown before you confirm each payment, and we will never charge a fee you have not seen. Safaricom may charge its own M-Pesa fees, which we show where we can. We will give you at least 30 days' notice before we increase a fee.
7. Rent Cover
Rent Cover lets an eligible tenant have their rent paid by Kodia in a month when they cannot pay it, and then repay that amount in instalments added to the rent they pay through Kodia afterwards.
- Licensing. Rent Cover is credit. It will only be offered once Kodia, or a licensed partner named in your Rent Cover agreement, holds the authorisation required from the Central Bank of Kenya.
- Eligibility. Eligibility depends mainly on your history of rent payments through Kodia, and on other checks we will explain in the app, which may include a credit reference bureau check. Rent Cover is not guaranteed, and paying rent through Kodia does not by itself entitle you to it.
- Your agreement. Each time you use Rent Cover you will receive a separate agreement and a key facts statement before you accept. These show the amount covered, the total cost including any fees or interest, the repayment schedule and what happens if you miss a repayment. The agreement for each Rent Cover prevails over this section if they differ.
- Repayment. Repayments are collected as set out in your agreement, usually as an amount added to your later rent payments through Kodia. If you stop paying rent through Kodia, the outstanding amount remains payable and we will agree a way for you to repay it.
- Missed repayments. If you do not repay as agreed, we will contact you. We may share information about the debt with licensed credit reference bureaus, but only after giving you the notice required by Kenyan law. We will not contact your family, friends, employer or landlord about the debt.
8. Landlords
Landlords do not need a Kodia account to receive rent, and rent arrives in the M-Pesa number, till or paybill they already use. If a landlord or agent opens a Kodia account, they confirm that they are entitled to receive rent through the payment details they register, and they agree that we may show their registered name to tenants who pay them. Where a tenant uses Rent Cover, the landlord receives the rent from Kodia and is not responsible for the tenant's repayments.
9. Acceptable use
You must not use Kodia:
- for fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing or any other unlawful purpose;
- to make payments that are not genuine rent or property-related payments;
- to impersonate another person, or to open an account with someone else's details;
- to interfere with, copy, or try to gain unauthorised access to the service.
We are required by Kenyan law to monitor for suspicious activity and may report it to the Financial Reporting Centre or other authorities.
10. Suspension and closure
You may close your account at any time from the app or by contacting us. Any outstanding Rent Cover balance remains payable after closure.
We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud or other unlawful activity, or if the law or a regulator requires us to. We will tell you why, unless the law prevents us from doing so. Where we close an account for reasons other than a breach, we will give you at least 30 days' notice.
11. Kodia's content
The Kodia name, logo, website, app and their content belong to us or our licensors. You may use them only to use the service for your own purposes. You may not copy, sell or reuse them without our written permission.
12. Our liability
We will provide Kodia with reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss caused by:
- incorrect recipient details or amounts that you entered;
- failures, delays or limits in M-Pesa or other services we do not control;
- the acts or omissions of your landlord or tenant;
- events beyond our reasonable control.
Except where the law does not allow it, our total liability to you in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid to Kodia in that period plus the amount of any payment that we failed to deliver because of our own fault. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2012 or any other Kenyan law that cannot be excluded by agreement.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms to reflect changes to the service or the law. We will give you at least 30 days' notice of a material change by SMS, email or in the app, and show the date of the latest version at the top of this page. If you do not agree to a change, you may close your account before it takes effect.
14. Complaints
If something goes wrong, contact us at support email address or support phone number. We will acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days and aim to give a full response within 14 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the relevant regulator. That is the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner for personal data, the Central Bank of Kenya for Rent Cover, and the Competition Authority of Kenya for other consumer matters.
15. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya. If a dispute cannot be resolved through our complaints process, it will be decided by the courts of Kenya.
16. Contact us
registered company name
registered physical and postal address
Email: support email address
Phone: support phone number