Safaricom to ask for full control of M-Pesa

Vodafone, which owns the M-Pesa Solution, is earning more from licensing the innovation to Safaricom

Safaricom could demand to have a direct control of the M-Pesa system, which currently runs Vodafone, as way to stem the frequency of breakdowns.

Vodafone UK is Safaricom’s single largest shareholder and leases to it the M-Pesa system. (READ: Safaricom to seek up to $155m)

M-Pesa has experienced outages over the last two days causing a lot of inconvenience to the over 14 million subscribers who use the service to transact over Sh2 billion daily.

The system is currently hosted in Germany and serves various countries including Tanzania, South Africa and Afghanistan.

Speaking on Tuesday during a half-day media workshop at Nairobi, Safaricom CEO, Bob Collymore acknowledged the limited leeway that they have to manage the system as Vodafone UK is the one charged with managing the M-Pesa system.

“We are also fed up with the outages. The real solution can only occur when we bring this platform back to Kenya,” said Mr Collymore.

Two of the four platforms that run M-Pesa are to be brought in Kenya.

The project to be handled by the former CEO Michael Joseph, currently in charge of the M-Pesa operations in Vodafone, is expected to take place “sometimes next year.”