Nairobi News

HustleNews

Brace for M-Pesa interruptions from Friday as Safaricom upgrades


Telco giant Safaricom has announced an upgrading programme for its money transfer platform M-Pesa that will result in intermittent interruptions of service.

Chief executive Bob Collymore on Thursday released a statement to explain that the upgrading will take upto three weeks.

“This becomes the third major upgrade since M-Pesa’s launch ten years ago, and the first such upgrade since Safaricom migrated the platform to Kenya in 2015,” the statement read in part.

As a result of the upgrade, all M-Pesa services will be unavailable for a period of two hours on Friday June 30 from 1am to 3am.

International Money Transfer (IMT), KCB M-Pesa, M-Shwari and M-Kesho services will be unavailable on Monday July 5 for two hours from 1am to 3am.

In mid-July, Safaricom will conduct the changeover to the new platform, resulting in a 12 hour outage.

CHANGEOVER

The company also said a number of M-Pesa services will be sequentially withdrawn in the lead to the changeover.

“This will be communicated to M-PESA customers and partners through the media and Safaricom social channels,” the statement said.

The upgraded M-Pesa platform will pave way for Safaricom to rollout more features and enhancements on the service.

Among the new features that customers can look forward to include M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa implementation in the Safaricom App.

“Ten years ago, we began the journey of M-PESA by focusing on our customers’ need to send money home. Since then, we have experienced tremendous growth as the platform has grown to provide even more value to the ecosystem. This upgrade paves the way for the next phase of M-PESA and will enable the service deliver even more value for our customers and partners,” the statement said.