Software that has to work on Monday.
We are CitaTech. We build systems for the people who will actually run them, then we run some ourselves, so we find out what we got wrong before you do.
- In production
- 0
- Platforms we designed, built and still operate ourselves, not demos
- Shipped surface
- 0 APIs
- Versioned and documented, with a sandbox you can actually call
- Shared foundation
- 0 components
- Our own released library, so client projects do not start at zero
- On call
- Us
- We answer for the systems we ship, which changes how we build
- CitaPayoperational · 196ms
- CitaTech POSoperational · 65ms
Businesses building on our platform
Retail software
An offline-first point of sale for shops that need to sell now and sync later, with M-Pesa receipts and pay-as-you-go subscriptions.
vijopos.co.ke
Education
An academic companion for Kenyan universities and colleges, giving students past papers, course notes and AI tutoring.
gradepoa.co.ke
Two of our own, running in production
Other businesses run on our platform, and so do we. These two are ours: we built them, we still operate them, and they handle real money and real stock. You can go and use both.
CitaPay
Collect payments and pay out at scale
Collect payments through links, checkout, invoices and subscriptions. Pay out in bulk. Built on a developer-first API with sandbox and signed webhooks.
CitaTech POS
Run the shop: till, stock, staff and storefront
A multi-store till with barcode scanning, variant-level stock, purchasing, staff shifts and reporting, plus an online storefront sharing the same stock.
What we do
Five things, done properly. We would rather be genuinely good at these than list twelve.
- 01
Custom software
We design, build and run production systems end to end, from the data model to the deploy pipeline.
Web and mobile applications · APIs and backend systems · Payments and fintech integrations · Database design and migrations
- 02
AI engineering
We build AI into products properly: tool-using agents, structured generation and retrieval, on our own vendor-neutral runtime.
AI assistants and agents · Retrieval and document workflows · Model-agnostic architecture · Evaluation and guardrails
- 03
Platform & infrastructure
Shared foundations that make teams faster: component libraries, service scaffolding, CI and release tooling.
Design systems and component libraries · Monorepos and shared packages · CI/CD and release automation · Cloud deployment and monitoring
- 04
Security & resilience
We test the systems you own until they break, then help you fix what broke. Defensive work on your own infrastructure.
Load, stress and capacity testing · Rate limiting and abuse protection · Application security review · Failure and recovery testing
- 05
Technology consulting
Advice from a team that ships. We help you pick an architecture, scope the work and avoid the expensive mistakes.
Architecture and technical review · Systems and product scoping · Team augmentation · Legacy modernisation
Project
A defined scope with a start and an end. Best when you know what you need built.
Ongoing partnership
We act as your engineering team over time, shipping continuously alongside your business.
Advisory
Shorter engagements focused on decisions: architecture, technical due diligence, or a second opinion.
The API is the part you will live with
Whatever we build for you gets the same treatment CitaPay got. Sandbox that behaves like production, webhooks you can trust, and retries that do not double-charge anyone.
- Versioned REST API
- A documented /v1 surface for payments, checkout, payouts and subscriptions.
- Signed webhooks
- HMAC-signed events with wildcards, secret rotation, retries and a delivery log.
- A real sandbox
- Test keys hit the upstream provider's own sandbox, not a mock that lies to you.
- Idempotency
- Send a key, retry safely. The same charge never lands twice.
curl https://api.pay.citatech.cloud/v1/checkout/sessions \-H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_..." \-H "Idempotency-Key: order_10423" \-d amount=2500 \-d currency=KES \-d phone_number=254700000000{ "reference": "CP_8F2K4M9Q", "status": "PENDING", "amount": 2500, "currency": "KES", "checkout_url": "https://pay.citatech.cloud/checkout/CP_8F2K4M9Q"}# Send the same Idempotency-Key again and you get this# same session back, not a second charge.How we work
- 01
Understand
We start with the business problem and the constraints around it, not a feature list. Scoping the wrong thing precisely is the most expensive mistake there is.
- 02
Design
Architecture, data model and interfaces first. We would rather spend a week on the shape of the system than a quarter undoing it.
- 03
Build
Working software in front of you early and often, on foundations we already use in production ourselves.
- 04
Run
Deploy, monitor and keep improving. We operate our own products, so we build things we are willing to be on call for.
- We build on our own foundation
- A shared component library, common backend building blocks and a vendor-neutral AI runtime, all maintained as real released packages. Client projects start on top of it instead of from nothing.
- We run what we build
- Our products are live systems handling real money and real inventory. That operational experience is what separates advice that works from advice that sounds good.
- Vendor-neutral by design
- Our AI layer is built against our own interfaces rather than a single provider's SDK, so the model or vendor can change without rewriting the product.
- Engineering you can inherit
- Typed end to end, documented conventions, tests where they earn their keep. What we hand over should be maintainable by your team, not just by us.
Questions we get asked
If yours is not here, ask it. We would rather answer before you commit than after.
Tell us what you are trying to build.
If we are the wrong people for it, we will say so and point you somewhere better. That costs you one email.