Paying bills in Mozambique

I am living in Maputo so it is near the best of breed for utility paying infrastructure.
First rule, always have a backup for your ATM cards, for personal and electronic payments.
Edm pre-paid. Via EDM office, ATM or online banking. Try to do so you get an electronic or physical receipt. IE BIM Super IZI will leave you with problems. Use IZI. I can only comment on BIM and BCI. later others as I am changing banks.
Water. Office, IZI, ATM. Getting the bill is problamatic as hand delivered. Office has bill  if you get late and the bill are some three months previous. Make sure that you bill is only for your abode and the bill is not copied or for a different place.
Rent as per land lord. Can, electronic, ATM etc.

Note you can get a debit card. BIM & Bci has nameless and named cards - your name embrossed.  You can, if you are friendly to get both, or not have nameless card cancled when the named card is issued. This gives you twice the daily withdrawal limit so you can pay for a meal or a half tank of gas. If you can get a credit card that you may be able to have the limit low 1500mzn so you can use it as a funded debit card by prepaying the amount you want to spend, local or international. If you want international cards you must specify. Always check your balances regularly. Mistakes are made and getting through the blaming you, the easy answer, you will have to go quickly and stay on top of mistakes. Be prepared to lose all disputes, especially international.
Also note that when doing an international withdrawal be prepaid to see a duplicate withdrawal. It seems that the authorization for a transaction does not use the serial number as the transaction completion and until the Auth times out and your funds are released it will take three business days to 30 days.
Millennium Portugal, as other banks, have internet cards that operate as funded debit cards for protection. You can not use in atms etc so you can protect your self against boogie transactions by keeping the balance low.
Bank cards At the ATM are mostly reliable as the clearing is done by MasterCard or visa etc. But duplicate billing are evident. South African cards are a best guess wether they will work and you can lose your money.

Rule two , have an inside pocket for your cards as getting replacements (international) is hard or impossable through the mail.

Note
For people receiving USA social security, the proof of life forms are not received here, even using embassy address. Thus you need to check if you have been suspended via the My Social Security system and get the form and the embassy Maputo will handle restoring through Portugal embassy. They have reverted to faxing the forms rather than them getting lost in the mail so you can get restored in a month or so. Also do a direct deposit to one of the authorized countries, and use ATM (funds day of deposit) or SWIFT (three days to 2 1/2 months) to here.