Safaricom to upgrade M-Pesa platform

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Safaricom is making good on its plan to improve the M-Pesa payment platform, by migrating the service to a new platform for seamless connectivity.

The migration, to be carried out over the next few years, is aimed at avoiding disruptions and enabling instant payment on services.

With the current system, in use by over 14 million users, disruptions have occurred and payments to some utilities and vendors have taken as long as 48 hours to reflect.

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore noted late last year that M-Pesa had proved more popular than initially expected, making it difficult to support with its current platform. He said Safaricom would look to have more control over the system in order to be able to take faster action in the event of problems.

Ex-Safaricom CEO and the director of mobile money at Vodafone Group, Michael Joseph, credited with launching the M-Pesa system, says the new platform will introduce new functionality to the mobile payment system.

Millions of M-Pesa and Tigo Pesa customers in Tanzania will soon be able to send and receive money directly into each other’s wallets. This follows the recent signing of a mobile money interoperability agreement between Tigo and Vodacom. Read More

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