Faster deals expected as M-Pesa comes home

What you need to know:

  • New registrations, loan applications and repayments through M-Shwari have also been affected.
  • During the upgrade, some M-Pesa services have been disrupted including sending and receiving money from customer bank accounts.
  • M-Pesa recorded a peak average of 260 transactions per second and 440 airtime top-up transactions per second in the fiscal year ended March 2014.

M-Pesa service outages are expected to drastically reduce beginning next week as Safaricom completes the relocation of the system servers from Germany to Nairobi.

The company said yesterday that the process would result in faster transaction speeds as well as reduce system disruptions that often occur due to undersea fibre cuts.

During the upgrade, some M-Pesa services have been disrupted including sending and receiving money from customer bank accounts.

The system will be completely shut down between 11pm on Saturday until Sunday at noon.

“All services will resume on Sunday April 19 from 12 noon, we apologise for any inconveniences caused, international money transfer will resume at 4pm,” the company said in a statement.

Registration of new customers on M-Pesa will resume on Monday.

New registrations, loan applications and repayments through M-Shwari have also been affected.

“The company will be integrating all existing internal systems including security, redundancy and disaster recovery to the new platform.”

DEVELOPERS

Safaricom general manager financial services said the upgrade would reduce points of failure, increase capacity and allow a wider range of customer services.

Developers will also tap into the system to maximise their own services

M-Pesa recorded a peak average of 260 transactions per second and 440 airtime top-up transactions per second in the fiscal year ended March 2014.

The money transfer service has about 19 million customers, 14 million of which are active, and 81, 000 agent outlets countrywide.