Safaricom’s mobile money service M-PESA — the rails that move much of Kenya’s daily cash flow — has been fully restored after a scheduled system upgrade, the company announced this week. The upgrade, part of a multi-stage migration to a new M-PESA core, briefly interrupted services and left users facing lags and temporary outages. Safaricom says the exercise was necessary to expand capacity and improve long-term stability; critics and ordinary Kenyans, meanwhile, are still asking whether better performance is worth the continuing cost of transacting on the platform.
The timeline: planned maintenance, a cutover and a bumpy return
Safaricom published a notice in the run-up to the exercise announcing a scheduled M-PESA system upgrade in the early hours of Monday, 22 September 2025, saying services would be unavailable for a short maintenance window. Several news outlets tracked the outages and reported intermittent lags starting in the hours around the planned work. By Monday the company declared the upgrade completed and all M-PESA services restored to customers nationwide.
Public accounts and technology commentators reported that the cutover involved moving customer data and services to a new “M-PESA Core” and running live tests as engineers stabilised the new environment. Safaricom’s public materials say the new core increases transaction capacity per second substantially — a response to years of rising usage — and that hundreds of engineers were mobilised to manage the migration. Those technical changes explain why Safaricom planned a tightly controlled maintenance window, but they also explain why some users experienced delays beyond the planned outage period as tests and fine-tuning continued.
What changed under the hood — and why it matters
Safaricom’s public briefings state that the upgraded M-PESA Core expands the platform’s processing headroom: the infrastructure move increases baseline capacity (Safaricom cites an increase from roughly 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second with headroom to scale further). For a service that handles millions of small-value transfers, merchant payments and government disbursements daily, that capacity is crucial to preventing daytime slowdowns, failed payments and congested queues at agents. The new architecture is also billed as a foundation for new products and better resilience during national events and peak commerce periods.
Technically, such migrations are hard: they require synchronising customer accounts, preserving transaction history, and validating settlement flows with banks, agent networks and third-party payment partners. That’s why Safaricom staged the work overnight and deployed a big engineering team — but it also means brief friction for users when something in the chain needs extra attention. Tech commentators said this was a “necessary pain” for future reliability, while consumer groups pointed out that any downtime raises the stakes for people who depend on M-PESA to receive wages, remit to family, and access emergency funds.
Why Kenyans tolerate the costs — and why they complain about them
Despite frequent grumbles about fees, M-PESA remains the most convenient and trusted way to move money in Kenya. From market sellers and boda-boda drivers to salaried workers and families receiving remittances, users rely on the ubiquity of M-PESA agents, the integration with tills and utilities, and the simplicity of USSD or app-based transactions. The sheer scale of the agent network and merchant acceptance continue to make it the de facto payment layer.
But this convenience comes at a price. Over the last few years Safaricom’s tariffs for sends, withdrawals and merchant services have been a recurring public sore point. Consumer-facing guides and technology outlets document the fee tables and note that, while Safaricom has introduced some targeted reductions (for example, merchant Lipa-na-M-PESA adjustments), many users still say charges can be “exorbitant” for low-value transfers. Critics — including competition-watchers and financial-inclusion advocates — argue that the relative lack of competition and the platform’s market dominance allow pricing power that hurts lower-income users who make frequent, small transfers.
The government and M-PESA: partners on many fronts
M-PESA’s role goes beyond private commerce. The Kenyan government uses digital rails — often via third-party payment service providers — to disburse social protection payments such as the Inua Jamii transfers to older persons, or drought and emergency relief. Recent government updates and ministry posts show that payments under social protection programmes are disbursed via digital channels and made available at bank branches and M-PESA agent outlets, a setup that relies directly on Safaricom’s network and the platform’s reliability. For many beneficiaries the combination of a government stipend routed through mobile payments and an accessible local M-PESA agent is the difference between receiving cash on time and missing critical support.
That public-private interdependency raises policy stakes: when M-PESA experiences disruption, it is not just an inconvenience for private users — it can delay welfare transfers and payments to health workers, teachers and pensioners. The government’s repeated use of digital channels has sped inclusion and cut leakage in many programmes, but it also makes continuity on the platform a matter of public interest.
Where the debate goes next
1. Reliability vs. control: Safaricom’s upgrade aims to strengthen reliability and capacity — outcomes most users want — but the company must also reduce the friction and communication failures that make short outages feel catastrophic to millions. Transparent pre-upgrade communication and clear contingency channels for critical government disbursements will be essential.
2. Pricing pressure and competition: Calls for greater oversight on fees are not new. Regulators and the Competition Authority have received complaints about exclusivity and pricing; any future moves to open access to rails or create more independent PSPs would go a long way toward limiting fee inflation. Consumers and SMEs want lower costs; policymakers must weigh that against investment incentives for platform operators.
3. Agent and rural resilience: Upgrades and digital innovations must be matched by investment in agent liquidity and physical touchpoints. Many Kenyans still cash out or deposit at agents; when systems lag, queues and cash shortages can become secondary crises — especially in rural areas.
Safaricom’s system upgrade and the resumption of M-PESA services underline two enduring truths about Kenya’s mobile money economy: first, M-PESA is central and indispensable to everyday life, business and state delivery; second, that indispensability brings scrutiny. Users want a platform that is fast, secure and affordable. An upgraded core may deliver technical resilience and new product capacity — but unless pricing and customer experience keep pace, public patience will be tested again.
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