Safaricom apologises to customers after another M-Pesa transaction delay

Safaricom PLC has apologised to its customers after they experienced yet another Mpesa downtime on Monday for the second time this month alone.

For the better part of the evening, the Mpesa pay bill transactions could not go through, causing frustrations among customers. 

Admitting the technical hitch, Safaricom in a statement said,

“We experienced service intermittency with pay bill payments, that  resulted in some transactions not being completed on Mpesa.”

In Monday’s hitch, some customers experienced double transactions, with the first transaction unsuccessful, while the subsequent transactions went through. Later, they would receive a confirmation message of the first transaction being successful.

As of 9 pm, Safaricom users were still complaining of balance reduction with unsuccessful transactions.

Laazizi Supplies on X made payment which was saying unsuccessful only to take payment three times.

Another customer Lucy Muthoni’s transactions were deducted twice.

“The first one gave an error. Not completed, only for the other one to go through, plus the other one you initiated when the first was declined. FRUSTRATING SHUWALLY..” read the comment.

Another MPESA hitch

On  January 12, 2024, MPESA users were unable to transact following a downtime of the mobile money technology that started in the mid-morning hours.

Subscribers were unable to make any transactions through the service, including buying airtime. However, services were later restored in the afternoon.

One user on X (formerly Twitter) started a rumor that MPESA was down because it was being integrated with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

KRA refuted the claims and so did Safaricom, which assured its customers it would not share their data with other companies as it is against data protection laws.

Addressing the press, Safaricom Chief Finance Services Officer Esther Waititu dismissed rumours that did rounds on social media regarding MPESA-KRA integration.