Transfers

Send money from your Lenco accounts to bank accounts, mobile money wallets, Lenco Money wallets, merchant tills, or your own accounts.

WARNING

Initiation always returns HTTP 200. The Transfer.status field — "successful", "pending", or "failed" — is the outcome. See Error handling.

Initiate a transfer

Every initiation method takes account_id (your account UUID to debit), amount, and a unique reference, plus either a saved transfer_recipient_id or inline destination details.

# To a bank account
transfer = client.transfers.to_bank_account(
    account_id="your-account-uuid",
    amount=20.00,
    reference="order-1001",
    account_number="9130000000000",
    bank_id="002",
    narration="Invoice 1001",  # optional
)

# To mobile money (Zambia: airtel, mtn, zamtel — Malawi: airtel, tnm)
transfer = client.transfers.to_mobile_money(
    account_id="your-account-uuid",
    amount=20.00,
    reference="order-1002",
    phone="0977433571",
    operator="airtel",
    country="zm",
)

# To a Lenco Money wallet
transfer = client.transfers.to_lenco_money(
    account_id="your-account-uuid",
    amount=20.00,
    reference="order-1003",
    wallet_number="0000001",
)

# To a Lenco merchant till
transfer = client.transfers.to_lenco_merchant(
    account_id="your-account-uuid",
    amount=20.00,
    reference="order-1004",
    till_number="0000001",
)

# Between two of your own accounts
transfer = client.transfers.to_account(
    account_id="source-account-uuid",
    credit_account_id="destination-account-uuid",
    amount=100.00,
    reference="sweep-0001",
)

Parameter	Type	Description
account_id	str	Your 36-character account UUID to debit
amount	float	Amount, decimals allowed (for example 10.75)
reference	str	Unique reference — -, ., _ and alphanumerics only
narration	str	Optional narration
transfer_recipient_id	str	Optional saved recipient UUID
destination fields	str	Inline alternative to transfer_recipient_id

Query transfers

page = client.transfers.list(
    status="failed",
    type="mobile-money",
    from_date="2026-08-01",
    to_date="2026-08-25",
)

transfer = client.transfers.get("9525b4c6-502b-45be-90e1-81eb81a3f424")
transfer = client.transfers.get_by_reference("order-1001")

get_by_reference is how you recover from a network failure mid-initiation: look up your reference before retrying — see Error handling.

The Transfer object

Notable fields: id, amount, fee, currency, status, reason_for_failure, reference, lenco_reference, initiated_at, completed_at, and credit_account (the destination, with fields populated according to its type).

API details: transfers endpoints.