M-PESA is set to enhance its system on the 22nd of September. Here's a glimpse of the changes customers may encounter post-upgrade.
Safaricom, Kenya's leading telecommunications company, is set to execute a significant overhaul of its M-PESA platform. The migration to a new core, Fintech 2.0, is scheduled for September 22 and will affect over 50 million customers across Africa.
The three-hour upgrade window is intended to move customer data to the nyt, run live tests, and bring services back online before peak morning activity. The migration aims to provide faster response times and fewer interruptions during upgrades, addressing a long-standing demand for improved service reliability.
The shift to microservices allows Safaricom to update single components without taking the whole system offline, ensuring minimal service disruption during the cutover. Over 210 engineers in Kenya, along with over 100 specialists from abroad, are managing the migration to achieve this goal.
The new M-PESA cloud has been built locally, addressing a key concern about keeping customer data in Kenya. The migration to a local cloud agnostic setup with active-active architecture across multiple sites is part of the upgrade. Microsoft is hosting M-PESA workloads on Azure to support the launch of new applications.
Microsoft provides AI tools for improved fraud detection and predicting network issues, while Vodafone is investing $1.5 billion over the next decade in AI solutions for M-PESA markets. The partnership with these tech giants is crucial in ensuring the success of the upgrade.
The new platform, Fintech 2.0, can process 6,000 transactions per second at launch and can scale to 12,000 as demand grows. This increase in processing capacity will enable M-PESA to handle more news, reducing outages and shortening the time needed to roll out new features.
Today, M-PESA powers various services such as payments, credit, savings, remittances, insurance, and e-commerce across several African markets. The upgrade is scheduled to keep M-PESA relevant for the next decade as more services move to digital.
However, during the upgrade period, M-PESA services, including payments and airtime purchases, will be offline. The migration is a high-stakes exercise as any disruption affects millions of people and businesses that rely on M-PESA daily.
Safaricom migrated M-PESA from data centers in Germany to Kenya in 2015 under the "bring M-PESA home" project. Now, the company is taking the next step in its digital transformation journey, ensuring that M-PESA remains a reliable and efficient platform for its users. The upgrade is a testament to Safaricom's commitment to continuous improvement and innovation.
