Kenyans warned against buying power tokens from external sources
Kenya Power Company has issued a statement to the public to use its official pay bill numbers for pre-paid services and post-paid services respectively. In a notice on Tuesday, the power utility announced that it had only approved three paybill numbers, a number of banks as well as the USSD code *977#
For prepaid tokens, customers can purchase via the M-Pesa Paybill number 888880 while in the post-paid category, users are advised to make the purchase via the M-Pesa Paybill number 888888. For new connections, customers are advised to make the payment via M-Pesa Paybill 888899.
“We wish to inform our prepaid and postpaid customers that, effective Thursday, September 1, 2022, the purchase of prepaid tokens and payment of postpaid bills will only be made through the following (above-mentioned) authorised channels. Customers can also conveniently access these services through KPLC banking halls countrywide. They can also purchase tokens or pay their bills via USSD code *977#,” Kenya Power said in the statement.
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The company further cautioned users against purchasing tokens through third-party agents, mostly kiosks.
“Please note that no other third-party agent is authorised to offer these services on behalf of KPLC. The company will therefore not take liability for any transaction conducted through any other platform,” the company said.
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Kenya Power has in the recent past sought to increase the number of customers using prepaid meters in a bid to lower the proportion of outstanding electricity bills, most of which are owed by customers on post-paid.
Kenyans owed the company about Sh29 billion in unpaid power bills as at June 2021. However, the company managed to recover Sh900 million of this as at December 2021 following roll-out of an aggressive debt collection strategy.
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In March, thousands of Kenyans were unable to purchase electricity through the utility firm’s pre-paid token system, which had plunged them into darkness and affected households and businesses. In a statement, the utility firm said the issue stemmed from a technical problem affecting the service.
“We would like to inform our customers that we are experiencing a technical hitch which is affecting prepaid token generation and post-paid bill payment,” the firm said then.
This was not the first glitch to hit the company’s payments system. In April last year, the tokens service was down for more than 24 hours – affecting thousands of homes and businesses whose units had ran out.