Businesses hurt as Safaricom backed mobile money transfer service mpesa experienced downtime
Kenyans were unable to transact on Safaricom’s mobile money transfer service M-PESA thanks to a delay which began at around 11:00 am on Tuesday of January 9, 2024.
Safaricom said in a statement posted on its X account (formerly twitter) that M-pesa App services disruption was due to a system glitch.
“Apologies for the inconvenience. We are aware of the M-Pesa issue and working to resolve it soon,” Safaricom told its customers.
The service outage, which affected the app and the Sim Toolkit, caused uproar especially on social media as customers only got error mapping response that has since been fixed by the telco player.
Besides an error message that popped up on the M-PESA app, users received a message saying: “Dear customer, MPESA is currently undergoing maintenance and is unable to process your request. We apologise for the inconvenience.”
“Mpesa server was likely overwhelmed with transaction orders. Being a back to school day, I think customers made a lot of transactions. This error mapping response needs to be fixed,” Okii Eli, a Nairobi based techie, said.
The Nairobi Business Monthly can confirm that Daisy Wanjira (not her real name), an entrepreneur who is in the business of sand tried to send money through M-PESA to her supplier, but was not able to complete the transaction.
“I was forced to physically visit a bank to withdraw the cash in order to clear with my supplier. From a business perspective, that was not convenient,” she said.
Ms Wanjira shares the same sentiments with The Nairobi Law Monthly Journalist, who was also caught off guard as mpesa failed to process requests.
“I was in the hospital and I could not make payments through mPesa. On my way from the hospital I offered lift to a lady who was also not able to transfer money via mobile,”
On social media, story was the same, as some of top X users posting about their experience regarding the downtime.
“Mpesa cannot afford this kind of disruption. It’s a huge dent on the credibility of a service we have all known for reliability. There was once Nokia and Kodak…,” CEO of the Kenya Film Classification Board Dr. Ezekiel Mutua, said.
Rufas Kamau said: “If I go to a hotel and request a meal, I am more confident knowing my cash is in MPesa than any banking app. That’s how consistent and trustworthy MPesa has been. Today, with MPesa experiencing a downtime, many Kenyans fall into my category and are largely inconvenienced.”
Another x user, Honeyfarsafi wrote: “Mpesa left me stranded for some good minutes I told this guy to send me his number I’ll send it to him later and he said “haina noma” (no problem). I was moved, I’ll actually send him double.”
Lawrence Kitema said, “Just think of how much losses our business people have suffered due to the mpesa downtime.”
However, Safaricom has restored normal operations, and customers can now conduct M-pesa-related transactions including buying of airtime.
“All mpesa services are now available. We apologise for any inconveniences caused, and thank you for your patience as we worked to restores services,” Safaricom said in a statement.
