Collections

Request payments from customers — via mobile money prompt or by charging a card.

Mobile money collection

collection = client.collections.from_mobile_money(
    amount=13.00,
    reference="order-5678",
    phone="0977433571",
    operator="mtn",      # Zambia: airtel, mtn, zamtel — Malawi: airtel, tnm
    country="zm",
    bearer="merchant",   # or "customer" — who pays the fee
)

The collection starts as status == "pay-offline": the customer must approve a prompt on their phone. Notify them, then listen for the collection.successful webhook or poll get_by_reference.

Parameter	Type	Description
amount	float	Amount to collect, decimals allowed
reference	str	Unique reference
phone	str	Customer's mobile money phone number
operator	str	airtel, mtn, zamtel (ZM) — airtel, tnm (MW)
country	str	Optional — "zm" (Zambia) or "mw" (Malawi)
bearer	str	Optional — merchant (default) or customer

WARNING

Lenco's docs list merchant as the default when bearer is omitted, but live testing saw customer come back instead on one account. Pass bearer explicitly if which side pays the fee matters to you.

Card collection

See Card collections for the direct API. The direct API uses JWE-encrypted payloads, and PCI DSS scope becomes your responsibility. The result can carry a 3-D Secure redirect. For an alternative with no PCI DSS scope, see the popup widget note at the top of that same page.

Verify a payment

get_by_reference doubles as the verification endpoint for the Lenco popup widget: after the widget's onSuccess fires on your frontend, call this from your server with the reference before fulfilling:

collection = client.collections.get_by_reference("order-5678")
if collection.status == "successful":
    fulfill(collection.reference)

WARNING

Never call the Lenco API from your frontend — your secret token would be exposed. The frontend gets results from your server.

List and get

page = client.collections.list(status="successful", type="mobile-money", country="zm")
collection = client.collections.get("d7bd9ccb-0737-4e72-a387-d00454341f21")

The Collection object includes mobile_money_details, bank_account_details, or card_details depending on the channel, plus settlement once settled.

API details: collections endpoints.