PayPal restores M-Pesa international transactions after uproar from Kenyans
Financial technology company PayPal has restored its international transactions via M-Pesa more than four days after the initial delays and inaccessibility was noted.
Remote workers in Kenya who offer their services to international customers were unable to withdraw their income from PayPal and into M-Pesa, which is the leading mobile money application in Kenya.
Safaricom, the owners of M-Pesa, pointed out that the issue of the delayed or inoperable international transactions was not from their end.
“There is an maintenance error on the website, which our team is following up on for assistance. Sorry for the inconvenience,” Safaricom said.
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However, by Thursday morning, PayPal subscribers reported that they are now able to withdraw their funds. PayPal also confirmed the same.
“That’s great, now you can easily withdraw the funds to your M-Pesa, and use them any way you like. Need to pay your bills? No problem – your latest PayPal payment can be waiting for you on your M-Pesa. Yeah, it’s that easy,” PayPal assured its clients.
“It’s now easier for you to top up your PayPal account, and shop around the world. Just transfer your M-Pesa balance to your PayPal account, and get ready to shop almost anywhere, anytime.”
Over the past four days, Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) have been complaining about the delays and inaccessibility, making ‘PayPal Mpesa’ trend.
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The PayPal website where users could complete their transactions only had an announcement that the website was under maintenance and no information was given as to what the issue was. The site told users to visit the site after a few minutes; and over four days, this was the only message issued to them.
On Twitter, PayPal suffered a poor reputation in Kenya following a barrage of complaints as sampled by Nairobi News below:
“PayPal happened to me once. Those guys froze my money many years ago. I completely dislike PayPal,” said Gideon Miami.
“Are there no alternatives to this platform? Why complain about something for 10 years… its pure witchcraft… the customers are the issue,” Amina Nthalamy commented.
“PayPal has the worst customer service of all international financial services companies. It’s not by surprise that four days since the PayPal-to-M-Pesa and no official statement has been issued to explain to customers what is going on,” said Maithya Vilivu.
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