Hi Isaac (and everyone else).

These are good questions to ask on the pesapi mailing-list ;-)
Anyway let me respond inline here:

On 5/15/15 1:25 PM, Isaac Kimotho via skunkworks wrote:

Hi,
I have the following question on the above.

Has safaricom developed an API for their MPesa ?

Supposedly yes - so far it's only "big" partners that have been given access to it hence the "normal" paybill users have not yet gotten all the gory details.
I suspect it's only a matter of time until the information gets out ;-)

With the new MPesa dashboard design ,the changes made do they affect the PesaPi API?

Yes it does.
For Mpesa Paybill PesaPi only relies on the IPN functionality now. Previously it as relying on both IPN and Scrabing in an effort to increase reliability.

PesaPi still works with paybill accounts but the reliability has been reduced a bit (annoyingly so) - I am (slowly) working on improving it.

PesaPi API has it been upgraded and simplified?

Since when ?

Yes - PesaPi is often updated and if it has been long since you have tried it then you may not have seen the inbuilt configuration tool which makes it totally easy to setup these days.
Compare your experience with whats described on: http://www.pesapi.com/howto.html

Is there another way around it?

There are many ways around it.

If you want it "easy" you can pay someone to handle all the mess it is integrating directly with the telco's. I.e. Jambopay, Lipisha, PesaPal, etc...

If you don't want to pay anyone for handling the integration you can do it yourself it's not super difficult.... If you want to save time and avoid writing and maintaining the code yourself then you can use PesaPi, or any other code you can get hold on that does the job (I only know PesaPi to be freely available but several people have their own solution and if you are friends with them..)

..
Mike