No M-Pesa services this weekend

Mobile phone subscribers on Kenya’s largest phone network Safaricom will not use the mobile money transfer service M-Pesa from 11pm tonight for at least 12 hours.

Safaricom is upgrading its M-Pesa platform and relocating its servers from Germany where they were previously hosted to Kenya.

This means services such as sending and receiving money, purchasing airtime from M-Pesa and bank transactions, Lipa na M-Pesa or ATM withdrawals will be impossible to for at least 12 hours. Safaricom’s new M-Pesa platform is expected to go live by the end of this month raising the stakes in the battle to dominate Kenya’s lucrative mobile money industry.

The new system will allow Safaricom grow its financial product offering through new upgrades and better functionality. “Previously we used to have speeds of up to 450 transactions per second but with the new platform we will be able to do 900 transactions per second,” said Safaricom’s General Manager for financial services Ms Betty Mwangi during the announcement of the upgrade earlier this week.

“We are talking faster and more secure transactions and we have ensured that we have invested in the latest software and hardware technologies to make this happen,” explained Mwangi. The new M-Pesa system is expected to allow the operator introduce new services at the same time increase its integration with partners such as banks and utility companies.