MPESA, the popular mobile payment service in Kenya, experienced a major outage on Monday evening, leaving thousands of users stranded at shopping outlets.
The glitch started at around 5PM, with users being told that the system was unavailable. This led to widespread frustration, with many users taking to social media to express their concerns.
Renowned blogger Gabriel Oguda was among those affected, and he shared his experience on Twitter, saying that he was almost lynched after the services failed when he was on a supermarket queue.
Despite the disruptions caused by the outage, some users found humor in the situation, with one user joking about being a 'rich kid' who was unable to withdraw 70K.
MPESA is a crucial service for many Kenyans, with over 15 million people relying on it for their daily financial transactions. According to the Communication Authority of Kenya, Kenyans make 700,000 MPESA transactions per hour.
The outage is the latest in a series of issues that have affected MPESA in recent times. In December 2018, the government ordered a thorough probe into the service after its systems failed for more than 10 hours.
