Merchant accounts - accept payments without your own MID

What is payment facilitation?

Payment facilitation means LekkaPay holds the acquiring relationship with the bank, and you accept payments under a LekkaPay merchant account instead of applying for your own merchant number (MID). For a small or growing business the difference is practical: no bank application, no minimum-volume negotiation, no separate contract per payment method. One agreement with LekkaPay covers cards with 3-D Secure 2, Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, instant EFT via Ozow, M-Pesa, and vouchers - 1Voucher and OTT today, with additional voucher networks onboarding - plus risk screening, settlement and reporting, all included from the first transaction.

How fast can I go live?

Days, not months - with an honest qualifier. Most merchants go live within days of approval once compliance checks complete, and the checks themselves are usually the pacing item. LekkaPay is required to verify every business it settles money to - the same KYC obligation every regulated payment provider carries - so have your company registration documents, director identification and bank confirmation ready. Clean paperwork is the single biggest accelerator. The technology side rarely holds anyone up: the hosted checkout can be taking payments the same day you receive credentials, and plugins and the API follow the usual sandbox-then-live path.

Settlement, in plain language

You are paid on a defined settlement schedule, and every settlement statement itemises each transaction and each fee - no blended lump sums to decode. New merchant accounts typically carry a rolling reserve: a small percentage of each settlement held back for a fixed window, then released on schedule. It exists because, in the facilitation model, LekkaPay is financially liable for your chargebacks and refunds after money has been paid out to you; the reserve is the buffer that makes it possible to onboard businesses without years of trading history. We would rather explain that plainly on this page than have you discover it in clause 14 - the full explanation, with worked examples, lives at /insights/glossary/rolling-reserve/.

What happens when you outgrow the umbrella?

Facilitation is the fast road in, not a ceiling. When your volumes justify a direct acquiring relationship, you apply for your own MID and switch to the LekkaPay gateway - the same platform underneath, so your integration, your stored-card tokens and your reporting history stay exactly where they are. The commercial model changes; the code does not. That is a deliberate design decision: growing merchants should never have to re-integrate in order to graduate, and with LekkaPay you never will.