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Safaricom set to upgrade M-Pesa with more features

Safcom

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NMG

Safaricom #ticker:SCOM will beginning today undertake a three-week upgrade of M-Pesa to enable the rollout of more features on the mobile money platform, which serves more than 26 million customers.

The telecoms giant says the upgrade, the third in 10 years, will automate some of the M-Pesa functions, reducing the need for customers to make requests to its call centre.

The upgrade will also reduce the time that new partners take to be integrated onto the M-Pesa system from weeks to a few hours and also see M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa integrated into the Safaricom App.

“Since (launching M-Pesa), we have experienced tremendous growth as the platform has grown to provide even more value to the ecosystem,” Bob Collymore, Safaricom chief executive, said in a statement.

“This upgrade paves the way for the next phase of M-Pesa and will enable the service deliver even more value for our customers and partners.”

As a consequence of this system changeover, customers will be unable to transact on the service for two hours on June 30 beginning 1am and again on July 5 at a similar time.

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