Safaricom's M-Pesa experiences second outage in January

Kenyan operator Safaricom has confirmed that its mobile money platform M-Pesa has been experiencing outages mainly impacting its paybill services and bank-to-M-Pesa transfers.

The paybill services allow M-Pesa users to pay for goods and services or transfer money from one platform to another.

This is the second outage in January that Safaricom's M-Pesa customers have experienced. Two weeks ago, customers experienced a similar outage. However, Safaricom only acknowledged the outage hours after complaints from customers.

The telco has yet to explain what is causing the current disruption and has only posted a brief message on its social media pages acknowledging the technical issue.

M-Pesa outage woes

On Monday, some M-Pesa customers using the paybill feature – and other third-party services reliant on M-Pesa – began reporting the outage. That led to Safaricom sending a notice to customers stating that the issue had been resolved.

However, it appeared that the outage persisted to Tuesday, leading to the telco issuing another notice on its social media platforms.

Safaricom has yet to explain what is causing the M-Pesa paybill disruption and only posted a brief message on its social media pages acknowledging the technical issue. (Source: Philip Mostert for Vodafone Group)

The outage also led to companies that use M-Pesa, like Kenya Power, sending out their own notices urging customers to use alternative digital channels to purchase electricity.

M-Pesa still Safaricom's cash cow

Even though M-Pesa has been experiencing outages, it is still Safaricom's most profitable service.

It contributed 42.1% of the Kenyan operator's overall profit in the six months to September 31, 2023.

The platform's growth led to the telco acquiring a mobile money license in neighboring Ethiopia in May 2023. In Ethiopia it registered over a million customers within three months of going live.

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In April 2020, Vodacom and Safaricom officially acquired the M-Pesa brand via a joint venture. At the time the companies said that it would give them full control of the M-Pesa brand, product development and support services as well as the opportunity to expand M-Pesa into new African markets.

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*Top image Source: WorldRemit Comms on Flickr via CC 2.0.

— Matshepo Sehloho, Associate Editor, Connecting Africa