Treasury report reveals fears over M-Pesa’s critical role in economy

A Treasury report has warned that the collapse of Safaricom’s M-Pesa service would cause widespread disruption in the economy, indicating the deep entrenchment of mobile money transactions in Kenyans’ daily lives.

The Treasury’s recently released Budget Policy Statement (BPS) says that a technology disaster affecting the M-Pesa-dominated mobile transactions is now a fiscal risk, placing the money transfer systems among other potential threats to the economy that are watched keenly by policy wonks.