M-Pesa upgrade outage to last four hours on Saturday

Safaricom’s M-Pesa upgrade on Saturday will last for four hours and not 11 hours as it had been stated earlier.

“Contrary to the earlier announced outage period, M-Pesa services will only be unavailable for four hours starting Sunday, July 16, from 12am to 4am,” Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore said in a notice to customers.

The scheduled upgrade will see new M-Pesa features added and some functions automated to the platform, a move that begun on June 30. It will also reduce the need for customers to make requests at its call centre.

Collymore added that they expect all services to be restored and M-Pesa to be fully functional following the process.

“We thank our customers for their continued support during this update,” said Collymore.

This system upgrade will reduce the time that new partners take to be integrated onto the M-Pesa system from weeks to a few hours and also see M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa integrated into the Safaricom app.

“Since M-Pesa was launched, 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,” noted the CEO.