The over 19 million Kenyans who use M-Pesa for their financial transactions will be left stranded over the weekend. The popular mobile phone money transfer system will be shut down on Saturday and Sunday as Safaricom moves it from servers located in Germany to Kenya.
That means that sending and receiving money, loading up on mobile money from bank accounts, making purchases at petrol stations, supermarkets, bars and restaurants through Lipa na M-Pesa, and paying electricity, water, and other utility bills will be unavailable for the two days.
“We have begun the long-awaited journey to bring M-Pesa home,” said Ms Betty Mwangi, Safaricom’s general manager for financial services.
Borrowers who use the M-Shwari platform — a partnership between Safaricom and the Commercial Bank of Africa — and M-Kesho — the partnership
with Equity Bank — will also not be able to borrow or repay loans during the 48-hour period.
Transactions on Kenya Commercial Bank’s Mobi-Bank and M-Benki will also be interrupted because they are hosted by M-Pesa.
Safaricom customers will also not be able to change their personal identification numbers, activate their accounts or access bank accounts for those who use
their mobile phones for banking.
The Commercial Bank of Africa is the largest bank by customer numbers largely because of its over 10 million M-Shwari customers. Each day, M-Shwari processes 50,000 loans and by early March this year, the bank had given out Sh29 billion in loans.
M-Shwari has Sh153 billion in cumulative deposits from its over seven million active users. These, too, will be affected when the system will be temporarily
unavailable this weekend.
According to records from Safaricom, M-Pesa users paid Sh11 billion per month through Lipa Na M-Pesa and Pay Bill in the last financial year, meaning that
they transacted business worth on average Sh360 million daily.
Every second in the last financial year, which ended in March 2014, M-Pesa users carried out 260 transactions through the mobile money transfer
system.
They also carried out 440 airtime top-up transactions through the system. The number of transactions can only have increased in the last 12 months, meaning
that on the two days the service will be unavailable, millions of transactions will be on hold. However, Safaricom yesterday said that once the
upgrade is completed, its customers will enjoy faster transaction times while the system will be more
secure.
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