How to read a repayment schedule

What the schedule must show you

Every loan comes with a page of dates and figures: the repayment schedule (ratiba ya marejesho). You will look at it every month until the loan is cleared, so read it properly now, while you can still ask questions without owing anything.

If your lender is Tier 2 (a non-deposit-taking microfinance lender licensed by the Bank of Tanzania), regulation 39(2) of the Bank's 2019 regulations for such lenders (GN 679) sets out what the loan agreement must contain. For the schedule, that means:

• how many installments there are (each one is a rejesho), under 39(2)(e);
• the amount of each installment with its principal, interest and fees shown separately, and its due date, also under 39(2)(e);
• the total of every payment over the life of the loan, under 39(2)(f);
• the interest rate computation method, under 39(2)(g), which the agreement must state along with the nominal annual rate and the effective annual rate including all fees, under 39(2)(b) and (d).

Those regulations are made under the Microfinance Act 2018, which "shall apply to Mainland Tanzania" (section 2), so they do not bind lenders in Zanzibar.

The Bank's 2019 consumer protection regulations (GN 884) reach further. They apply to all financial service providers the Bank licenses or supervises, which takes in banks and Tier 2 lenders alike. Regulation 26(1)(d) adds a similar duty: you must be given the "total cost of credit with a breakdown of all costs of each installment", including total interest, total principal and third-party charges and fees. SACCOS work under their own regulations, covered in VICOBA, SACCOS and microfinance lenders.

A flat-rate schedule, line by line

Say Zawadi sells fabric at the market in Tanga and borrows TZS 600,000 to buy stock in bulk. The loan is paid out on 14 October 2026 and repaid in six monthly installments at 5% a month flat. The lender also takes a one-off management fee of TZS 12,000, which in this example it collects with the first installment.

Flat means the interest (riba) is worked out once, on the full TZS 600,000, and charged every month however much she has repaid: 5% of 600,000 is TZS 30,000 a month. The principal comes back in six equal parts of TZS 100,000.

The last column is the principal still owed after each payment, and it should reach zero on the final line. A schedule may print a different figure instead: the total still to pay, which includes interest you have not reached yet. Here that is 792,000 − 142,000 = TZS 650,000 after the first installment and TZS 520,000 after the second.

Only the principal column shows how much of the loan is actually cleared, so find out which figure your schedule prints before you rely on it.

The same loan on a reducing balance

On a reducing balance, each month's interest is 5% of the principal still owed after the previous payment, so it falls as the loan is paid down. The installment is fixed so that equal payments clear the loan: TZS 118,210 here, with the TZS 12,000 fee added to the first.

You can check any row on a phone calculator. In December, 5% of 511,790 is 25,589.50, which rounds up to 25,590; the rest of the 118,210, TZS 92,620, comes off the principal.

The final installment is TZS 4 larger than the others because of rounding. The equal installment has been rounded down from TZS 118,210.48 to whole shillings, and each month's interest has been rounded to the nearest shilling; the few shillings left over land in the last row. A difference of a few shillings from rounding is expected; a difference of thousands needs an explanation from the lender.

Same amount, same 5%, same six months: the reducing loan charges TZS 109,264 of interest against TZS 180,000 flat, which is TZS 70,736 less. Leaving the fee aside, the flat loan costs as much as a reducing-balance loan at about 8.05% a month. What a loan really costs explains the two methods in full, what the law now says about flat interest, and how fees change the true yearly rate.

Set the two tables side by side and the interest column gives the method away: flat, it never moves; reducing, it shrinks on every row. In its Banking Supervision Annual Report for 2024, the Bank says it "required all licensed microfinance services providers to establish customer complaints handling mechanisms and the use reducing balance method for interest rate computation". The binding rule sits in the consumer protection regulations: since the 2025 amendment (GN 298) replaced regulation 11(4), every lender the Bank licenses or supervises, Tier 2 lenders included, must work out loan interest on a reducing balance. If a Tier 2 lender hands you a schedule with a flat interest column, ask it to explain the method in writing.

Checks to make before you sign

1. Add up the installment column. It should equal the sum of all payments stated in the agreement: TZS 792,000 on Zawadi's flat loan.
2. Add up the principal column. It should equal the amount you borrowed, and the principal still owed should be zero on the last row.
3. Look at the interest column and confirm its pattern matches the method the agreement names.
4. Find every entry in the fees column (ada) in the agreement itself. Regulation 56(3) says a Tier 2 lender "shall not collect interest, fees, charges, or expenses unless they are prescribed in the loan agreement". Which fees are allowed at all is set out in fees a lender cannot charge.
5. Compare the first due date with the day your money comes in. A weekly loan paid out on a Friday with the first installment due on Monday asks for cash before your stock has sold. Ask for a later first date now. The lender does not have to agree, and once you have signed, moving a date needs its agreement to change the contract.
6. Check the later dates against your own cash flow. If your customers pay you at the end of the month, a due date on the 3rd is easier to meet than one on the 28th.

For the rest of the agreement, questions to ask before you sign gives a question-by-question list with the rule behind each answer.

How the lender must record your payment

Two rules in regulation 42 of GN 679 decide what a Tier 2 lender does with your money once it arrives.

The first is about the date. Under regulation 42(1) the lender "shall credit a borrower's account with the amount received on the date payment was made". If you paid on the due date, your account should carry that date even if the lender only posts the payment to its system days later. Guideline 16(2) of the Bank's 2024 Guidelines on Fees and Charges adds that if the lender's own negligence made you late, it cannot charge you a late penalty for it.

The second is about the order. Under regulation 42(2) each payment "shall first be allocated to any due interest charges on the loan, then to the outstanding fees and charges on the loan and lastly to settle any due principal payment". Go back to Zawadi's flat loan. On 14 November 2026 she can pay only TZS 100,000 of the TZS 142,000 due. The lender must apply it like this:

Her principal still owed is now TZS 542,000 (600,000 − 58,000), not the 500,000 printed on the schedule, and TZS 42,000 of the first installment is still overdue. If you have paid short and your principal has barely moved, check this order before assuming a mistake. What happens if you miss a payment sets out what a lender can do next about an overdue loan, and when.

A part payment is credited, but it does not stop the installment being overdue. Under regulation 44(2), once any part of an installment has been unpaid for a day, the lender counts the whole loan as past due.

When a payment you made does not appear

A payment can go astray in ordinary ways: cash handed to a field officer, a transfer to the wrong till number, a branch that has not yet posted the day's receipts. Your own record is what settles it. Photograph the schedule the day you sign, tick each line when you pay, and write the date and the receipt or transaction number beside it.

1. Gather the proof: the receipt (risiti), or the mobile-money confirmation SMS showing the amount, the date, the transaction ID and the number you paid to. Regulation 22(5) of the 2019 consumer protection regulations says a provider must give you "agreements, forms, receipts and statements" in written form, so ask for a written receipt whenever you pay cash.
2. Ask for a loan statement (taarifa ya mkopo). Regulation 28 of the same regulations, as amended in 2025, requires a free periodic written statement of every account the provider operates for you "at least once a month", and your balance whenever you ask. For a Tier 2 lender, guideline 17(2)(d) of the 2024 fees guidelines lists "issuance of loan statements" among the fees it may not charge.
3. Compare the statement with your schedule line by line. Under regulation 28(5) it must show all transactions, their values and dates, the opening and closing balances, the interest rate, and the fees and penalties charged. Each payment should carry the date you paid.
4. Complain in writing to the lender, and give the details: "I paid TZS 130,000 on 14 December 2026 to your till, transaction ID 8K3P2QX; it is not on my statement." Regulation 54 requires every Tier 2 lender to have a complaints desk or a designated officer, with the contact details on display at its branches. Under clause 12 of the Bank's 2025 Guidelines for Handling Financial Consumer Complaints, it may not charge you anything for handling the complaint.
5. If the lender does not answer in time, or you disagree with its answer, take the complaint to the Bank through Sema na BoT. The deadlines and the escalation steps are set out in your rights as a borrower.

Keep paying the later installments on time while the missing payment is investigated, so the dispute stays about one payment and does not become a missed-payment problem as well.

When the schedule changes, or you finish early

If your income falls, regulation 43 says a Tier 2 lender "may restructure" the loan for a borrower who is short of cash or in financial distress, changing the installment amount or the repayment period. It does so only "subject to its lending policy", so it is the lender's decision to make, not a right you can insist on. Guideline 13(5) of the 2024 fees guidelines allows a one-off restructuring fee.

Spreading the same balance over more months at the same rate adds interest, so ask for the new total before you agree. Get the new schedule in writing, run the checks above on it, and keep the old one. How to prepare for that conversation is in getting out of debt you already have.

To clear the loan early, start from the principal column. Regulation 42(3) gives you the right to repay before maturity, all of the loan or part of it, "without advance notice and without being penalized". Once you have repaid in full, 42(4) says you "shall not be required to pay interest for the remaining period to maturity". On the reducing loan above, clearing it straight after the third installment starts from TZS 321,919 of principal, not the TZS 354,634 left in installments.

Ask the lender for the payoff figure on paper, for a named date. Guideline 15 of the 2024 fees guidelines permits a fee for settling early only if the agreement clearly provides for it; how that squares with regulation 42(3) is taken up in the fees guide.

Rebuild the schedule yourself

Kopesha's free loan calculator will rebuild a lender's schedule in a few minutes. Enter the amount, the rate as quoted, the number of installments, weekly or monthly, and flat or reducing balance. Put any fee in the box for fees charged at the start; that changes the total cost but not the principal and interest columns.

Then set the calculator's schedule beside the lender's. If the principal and interest columns agree to within a few shillings of rounding, the schedule matches the rate and method you were told. If they differ by more, switch the "How interest is charged" box between flat and reducing balance and compare again, since the method is the first thing to rule out. If they still differ, take both to the loan officer and ask which figure in the agreement produces the lender's numbers.

Sources

• Microfinance (Non-Deposit Taking Microfinance Service Providers) Regulations, 2019 (GN 679), regulations 2, 39, 42, 43, 44, 54 and 56 — Bank of Tanzania
• Microfinance Act, 2018 (Act No. 10 of 2018), section 2 — Bank of Tanzania
• Bank of Tanzania (Financial Consumer Protection) Regulations, 2019 (GN 884), regulations 22, 26 and 28 — Bank of Tanzania
• Bank of Tanzania (Financial Consumer Protection) (Amendment) Regulations, 2025 (GN 298), new regulation 2 (application), new regulation 11(4) (reducing-balance method) and amendment of regulation 28 — Bank of Tanzania
• Guidelines on Fees and Charges for Microfinance Service Providers, 2024, guidelines 4, 13, 15, 16 and 17 — Bank of Tanzania
• Guidelines for Handling Financial Consumer Complaints, 2025, clause 12 — Bank of Tanzania
• Banking Supervision Annual Report 2024, section 3.2.2 (microfinance service providers) — Bank of Tanzania
• Sema na BoT (complaints to the Bank of Tanzania)

What changed

• 29 September 2026: Rewritten. Corrected the worked example: it counted down the total still to pay (650,000, 520,000…) as if it were the balance of the loan; the schedules now show the principal still owed, and say that the rate is 5% a month flat, which the old example (TZS 600,000 repaid as TZS 780,000) never stated. Removed the unsourced claims that most lenders will move a due date if asked and that restructuring is ordinary business and far cheaper than default; regulation 43 says a lender may restructure, subject to its lending policy, and gives the borrower no right to it. Added full flat and reducing-balance schedules with principal, interest and fee columns; Financial Consumer Protection regulation 11(4) as replaced in 2025 (GN 298), which requires lenders the Bank licenses or supervises to use the reducing-balance method; regulation 42(1) (a payment is credited on the day it is made) and 42(2) (interest first, then fees, then principal) with a worked short payment; the free loan statement (Financial Consumer Protection regulation 28 as amended in 2025, and fees guideline 17(2)(d)); the complaint route; early repayment under regulation 42(3)–(4); and links to the loan calculator and related guides.
• 24 September 2026: Added references to the Bank of Tanzania's regulations and a list of sources.
• 22 September 2026: First published.

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