This archive report was first published on 26 March 2020.
MPESA Outage Leaves Thousands of Kenyans in Limbo ¶
On March 26, 2020, thousands of Kenyans were left stranded and frustrated after MPESA systems went down, with customers unable to access mobile loan services and the Safaricom App.
MPESA was not working for the better part of Wednesday evening, with customers who tried to transact on the platform receiving a message from Safaricom telling them that the systems were down.
Mobile loan services like KCB Loans and Mshwari were also unavailable, leaving many Kenyans unable to access their money.
President Uhuru Kenyatta had previously encouraged the use of cashless transactions to reduce the risk of transmission through physical handling of money, but the MPESA outage has raised concerns about the reliability of mobile money services.
As the government continues to urge Kenyans to use mobile money services, the MPESA outage has highlighted the need for a more reliable and efficient system.
