The short answer
Money lending software in Uganda replaces the exercise book and the Excel sheet with one record of every borrower, loan, guarantor and piece of collateral, and works out what is due, what is late and what the borrower owes today. The lean version we build covers borrower records, a register of securities for logbooks and land titles, interest on the reducing balance with late charges, MTN MoMo and Airtel Money disbursement and collection, SMS receipts and reminders, a daily collections sheet for field officers, and the books UMRA can ask to see.
The reason to fix it now is legal as much as practical. Since November 2024 money lenders have been capped at 2.8% a month, the 2018 Money Lenders Regulations require interest on the outstanding balance rather than flat, and if you go to court to recover a loan the Act requires you to produce your records. A calculator and a notebook make all three hard to prove.
Growth Informer Software Services builds it in Kampala on a fixed quote agreed before work starts, paid on a 50/25/25 plan, and you own the source code and the data. It is the money lender version of the Growth Informer Loan and SACCO Management System, set up for loans without deposits. It suits a lender with one office or a small field team. If you run several branches or want a borrower app and credit scoring, our fuller loan management system is the better fit.
What a lean money lender system includes
Each module replaces a page of the exercise book or a tab in your spreadsheet, and several map straight onto books the 2018 Money Lenders Regulations tell a lender to keep: a cash book, a ledger, a register of securities and a register of debtors.
- Borrowers and the debtor register: name, National ID number, phone, photo, workplace or business, home location and next of kin, a short creditworthiness check completed before approval, and every past and current loan on one screen.
- Register of securities: vehicle logbooks with registration number, land titles with plot, block and location, the value you placed on each item, the URSB movable property registry (SIMPRS) reference where you registered one, the safe or shelf where the original sits and the date it went back to the borrower. The Regulations make you liable for collateral lost in your custody, so the location field earns its place.
- Collateral the rules forbid: the form refuses a national ID, passport, ATM card, bank book or a transfer form signed before disbursement as security, because the Regulations bar all of them.
- Guarantors: linked to the loan they guarantee, with contacts and ID, so the agreement states the guarantorship as the Act requires.
- Loan products: monthly rate, term, fees and late charges set once per product, with the rate locked below a ceiling the owner sets, so an officer cannot type a different rate on a busy Friday afternoon.
- Loan agreement: generated from the loan with the disbursement date, principal, interest as a yearly percentage, security, repayment mode, guarantor and the right to repay early, ready to sign, witness and hand a copy to the borrower.
- Receipts and ledger: every repayment posts as a ledger entry and sends a receipt straight away, so the cash you hold and the loan book agree at the end of each day. It is the same double-entry discipline behind Moyo Pay, our own dual-currency wallet.
- Reports: loan book, arrears ageing, collections by officer, collateral held, and exports shaped to whatever UMRA asks you to produce.
Interest, late charges and the rules behind them
Money lending is a licensed activity. Under the Tier 4 Microfinance Institutions and Money Lenders Act, money lenders are licensed and supervised by the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA), and the licence is renewed every calendar year. Keeping it is your job, not the software's. What the software can do is stop your own calculations drifting outside the rules.
Reducing balance, not flat, worked through
The 2018 Money Lenders Regulations say interest is computed on the monthly outstanding balance of the principal, and Legal Notice No. 21 of 2024 caps money lenders at 2.8% a month, or 33.6% a year. Take an illustrative loan of UGX 2,400,000 over 4 months at 2.5% a month, repaid in equal principal instalments of UGX 600,000. Interest is UGX 60,000 in month one, then UGX 45,000, UGX 30,000 and UGX 15,000 as the balance falls: UGX 150,000 in total. Worked flat in an exercise book, the same loan charges UGX 60,000 every month, UGX 240,000 in total, which is UGX 90,000 more than the reducing balance method allows. The system builds the reducing schedule at disbursement and prints the rate as a yearly figure, 30% in this case, because the Act requires the contract to state interest as a percentage per year.
Late payment
The Act makes a contract unenforceable if it provides for compound interest or raises the rate because the borrower defaulted. What it allows is simple interest on the overdue sum from the day it fell due. So if the third instalment of UGX 630,000 is late, the system charges simple interest on that UGX 630,000 only, shows any late charge written into the agreement as its own line, and never adds interest to interest. Whether fees and late charges count toward the cap is a question for UMRA or your lawyer, and every rate is a setting you can change when the rules change.
These figures are illustrations, not legal advice. To model your own book, use our loan portfolio calculator. If you are still at the licence stage, read how to start a money lending business in Uganda before you spend on software.
How loan tracking works day to day
Disbursement
An officer opens the borrower, attaches the guarantor and collateral, picks the product, and the system builds the schedule and the agreement. You can require a second person to approve before any cash or Mobile Money leaves, with approval limits set by the owner, and the borrower receives a copy of the signed agreement, which the Regulations require.
The morning collections sheet
Each field officer opens a list on their phone, or a printed sheet where the network is poor, showing who is due today, who is overdue, the amount, the borrower's phone and where to find them, grouped by area so the route makes sense. Cash is recorded against each borrower on the spot and the receipt goes out by SMS.
Evening reconciliation
Before the office closes, cash handed in is matched against what each officer recorded, and Mobile Money receipts are matched by transaction ID. Any gap shows by officer the same day, not at month end.
When collateral is at risk
The Regulations bar a lender from disposing of collateral until 60 days after a written demand notice, from selling below forced sale value in the first two auctions, and from refusing a borrower who pays up to redeem it. The system dates the demand notice, counts the 60 days, records the valuation and each auction attempt, and applies sale proceeds to the loan first, then the costs of sale, with any balance owed back to the borrower.
MTN MoMo, Airtel Money, SMS and borrower privacy
A borrower who can repay from their phone does not have to travel to your office, and the system should know about that payment when it lands, not when someone forwards a screenshot.
- Collection: the borrower pays into your business collection account or approves a payment prompt, and the repayment posts against the right loan with its transaction ID.
- Disbursement: approved loans go to the borrower's MTN or Airtel line from your business account, with the transaction ID saved on the loan.
- SMS receipts and reminders: a receipt the moment a payment posts, then reminders a few days before the due date, on the day and after a missed payment. You control the wording and timing.
- Manual fallback: if a network API is down or a borrower pays the wrong way, an officer records the receipt by transaction ID and it still reconciles.
Live Mobile Money APIs need business accounts and approval from the networks or an approved aggregator, and that paperwork sits with you as the account holder. It can take longer than the build, so start it early. Our Mobile Money integration service handles the technical side, and we have already built Mobile Money and USSD into Moyo Pay. Transaction and SMS charges go to the networks and the SMS provider, separate from our quote.
Reminders are also where lenders get into trouble. The Regulations require borrower information to stay confidential without the borrower's written consent, the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 requires anyone processing personal data to register with the Personal Data Protection Office, and in July 2025 the director of a digital lender was convicted under that Act after a borrower's name, number and photo were used in a threatening WhatsApp video. So messages go to the borrower's own number, contacting anyone else needs consent recorded on the file, and each staff member sees and exports only what their role needs.
Lean money lender system or full loan management system?
Decide which one you need before you ask anyone for a quote, because the scope differs a lot. A money lenders app in Uganda usually means one of two things: a staff tool for officers in the field, which the lean version covers, or an app borrowers use to apply and repay, which belongs in the fuller system.
The lean version fits if
- You run one office, or one office plus a small team of field officers, with a handful of loan products.
- Your pain is lost records, logbooks you cannot locate, interest worked out differently by each officer and arrears you only discover at month end.
- Borrowers deal with you in person, by Mobile Money and by SMS rather than through an app.
Choose the fuller system if
- You operate from several places of business, each with its own cash, staff and approval limits. The Regulations also require you to notify UMRA of each additional location.
- You want a borrower app, online applications, credit scoring or investor reporting.
- You need portfolio at risk tracking and maker and checker controls across branches.
That larger build is our loan management system for Uganda, and the lean version can be designed to grow into it later.
When not to build custom at all
If you have a few dozen active loans and one careful person keeping the book, a spreadsheet that calculates on the reducing balance, plus a proper collateral log, may be enough for now, and a subscription tool can cost less than a build. Custom pays off when your collateral routine, field collections or Mobile Money setup does not fit what those tools offer, or when you want to own the code and the data outright. Our guide to custom vs off-the-shelf loan management software sets out the trade-offs.
What money lending software costs
We give a fixed price after one conversation about your loan products, how many active loans you carry, how many staff will log in and whether you need Mobile Money from day one. The table shows where each part of the work starts.
| What you get | Investment | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Lean money lending system: borrowers, register of securities, guarantors, reducing balance interest and late charges, loan agreements, SMS receipts, collections sheet and reports | Lenders moving off exercise books and Excel | |
| MTN MoMo and Airtel Money disbursement and collection | Lenders whose borrowers repay by Mobile Money | |
| Hosting, backups, support and small updates after launch | per month | Keeping the system running and the records safe |
Mobile Money transaction fees and SMS charges are paid to the providers directly. You pay us on a 50/25/25 plan, and you receive the source code with your data in a database you control, which matters when the Regulations expect lending records to be kept for ten years.
We will not show you lending case studies we do not have. What we can show you is the hard part already running in our own products: Moyo Pay, a dual-currency wallet on a double-entry ledger with Mobile Money and USSD, and Growth Informer Business, our live cloud POS, inventory and business platform, alongside 37 live website and app builds in our portfolio.
Frequently asked questions
How much does money lending software cost in Uganda?
A lean money lending system from Growth Informer Software Services is priced , with MTN MoMo and Airtel Money integration quoted as a separate line. The final figure depends on your loan products, the number of staff logging in and your collections routine, and it is fixed in writing before work starts, paid on a 50/25/25 plan.
Do I need a licence before I use money lending software?
Software does not replace a licence. Money lenders in Uganda are licensed and supervised by the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA) under the Tier 4 Microfinance Institutions and Money Lenders Act, and the licence is renewed every year. Staying licensed is your obligation. The system keeps the records, receipts and agreements that UMRA or a court can ask you to produce.
Can the system charge flat monthly interest?
It calculates loans on the reducing balance, because the 2018 Money Lenders Regulations require interest to be computed on the monthly outstanding balance of the principal. Legal Notice No. 21 of 2024 also caps money lenders at 2.8% a month, so each product's rate is locked below a ceiling you set. If your current loans were written flat, the system shows the difference so you and your adviser can decide how to treat them.
Can borrowers repay with MTN MoMo and Airtel Money?
Yes. Repayments post against the right loan once you have business collection accounts and API approval from the networks or an approved aggregator, which you apply for as the account holder. Until that approval comes through, officers record Mobile Money receipts by transaction ID so nothing is lost.
Can I move my existing Excel loan records into the system?
Yes. We map your spreadsheet columns to borrowers, loans, payments and collateral, and flag duplicates, loans with missing dates and loans set up on flat interest before go-live. Records that only exist in exercise books have to be typed in, so we plan that with your staff as part of the quote.