Safaricom has moved to explain why some customers saw money deducted from their M-Pesa balances after buying airtime or bundles for other subscribers with unpaid Okoa Jahazi loans. The dispute, which surfaced online in Kenya on 2018-11-20, has triggered fresh scrutiny of mobile credit terms and how consent is captured.
Several users said the deductions came as a surprise. One subscriber, who identified themselves as Lovely Lovel, wrote on the company’s Facebook wall: “Today a customer asks me to buy him bundles and I buy worth Sh50, then you deduct Sh275 from my M-Pesa account.”
Safaricom said the transaction flow gives the buyer a clear breakdown before money is taken. Through its Twitter handle, the company said: “When purchasing data for a number with Okoa Jahazi, you will be given a breakdown of the bundle cost and the due Okoa Jahazi, then the total deduction.” It added: “If the recipient has an outstanding Okoa Jahazi, it will notify you and prompt you to either accept or decline if you do not intend to pay.”
The explanation did little to settle the wider argument. ICT lawyer and Kenya ICT Network (KICTANet) official Ali Hussein said the practice raised ethical concerns, arguing: “Expecting a third party to pay someone’s loan simply because I am buying them bundles is sneaky, to say the least,” and adding, “Exposing my liabilities to a third party is ethically wrong whether I’ve accepted through the terms of conditions or not.”
Okoa Jahazi allows eligible prepaid subscribers to borrow airtime ranging from Sh10 to Sh1,000, with a 10 per cent service fee applied to each request. The terms also require repayment within three days, after which a user can be barred from the service for one week.
Safaricom’s terms further state that the company “reserves the right to withdraw the credit advance from any particular subscriber at any time and to vary or amend any element of the credit advance at any time without further notice.”
The controversy comes as mobile borrowing continues to expand in Kenya. The latest Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) report cited in the article said 26 per cent of Kenyan subscribers are digital borrowers, up from 17 per cent of mobile service subscribers who reported taking loans in the previous three months last year.
CBK Governor Patrick Njoroge had earlier this year called for tighter regulation to curb predatory lending by fintech firms, which he said had grown from a handful less than three years ago to almost two dozen. The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has also pushed for new rules on fintech products that fall across several regulatory mandates, with Director-General Francis Wangusi saying last year that the regulator was discussing an inter-disciplinary unit with the CBK to oversee such services.
The row has therefore become part of a broader debate over how mobile lenders and telecom operators disclose liabilities, enforce repayment, and protect users who may not expect to inherit another person’s debt during an ordinary airtime purchase.
