Safaricom upgrade knocks out M-PESA

Safaricom’s recent upgrade of some of its service in Kenya caused a disruption to their M-PESA offering, something for which the company was unprepared. The upgrade also managed to put a halt on airtime top up services.

Bob Collymore, Safaricom CEO (image source: file photo)

“The outage was as a result of a technical hitch that emanated from the routine upgrade of other Safaricom services which coincidentally affected all M-PESA handset transactions meaning that money transfers and other services like top-ups were not going through,” Safaricom said in a statement.

However, the problem was detected early and resolved. “By 11 am, the problem had been resolved and all handset transactions were going through. Even then, there were intermittent delays caused by and a queue of pending transactions which was expected to clear,” the company added.

The upgrades to Safaricom’s systems were carried out by IBM, and Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore was quick to apologise. “We regret the inconvenience this outage has caused and wish to reassure our beloved customers that our commitment to a safe, reliable and affordable M-PESA service remains unflinching,” he said.

Charlie Fripp – Acting Online editor