Safaricom confirms nationwide M-Pesa outage

Safaricom processed an impressive 46.4 billion M-PESA transactions worth Ksh41.68 trillion in the 2026 financial year, marking a significant increase in usage. This rise in transaction volumes and value was detailed in Safaricom's 2026 Sustainable Business Report, which compared the company's performance from March 31, 2026, to the previous year.

The report revealed that transaction volumes surged by 25.1% compared to the 2025 financial year, with 37.1 billion transactions in 2025 growing to 46.4 billion in 2026. The total value of transactions also increased by 8.9%, reaching Ksh38.27 trillion in 2026 from Ksh38.27 trillion in the previous year.

These statisctics translate to an average of around 127 million daily transactions, or approximately 88,000 transactions per minute, throughout the financial year. This growth in M-PESA usage was partly attributed to upgrades under Safaricom's Fintech 2.0 programme, which enhanced the platform's processing capacity. The upgraded system can now handle up to 12,000 transactions per second, a significant improvement from the initial 4,500 transactions per second.

Safaricom's commitment to maintaining high availability was evident in the report, with the platform achieving 99.999% availability throughout the year. This reliability, coupled with the technological enhancements, played a crucial role in the platform's growth.

Moreover, the number of customers actively using M-PESA rose from 35.8 million in the 2025 financial year to 41.7 million in 2026. This increase was driven by the expansion of financial services beyond money transfers, including payments, borrowing, savings, investments, and international remittances.

One notable initiative was the introduction of M-PESA Kadogo, which removes transaction charges for qualifying small-value payments. This scheme allows person-to-person transfers of Ksh100 and below, as well as merchant payments of Ksh200 and below, to be made fee-free, though these benefits are applied to qualifying transactions only.

The report also highlighted the expansion of M-PESA merchant businesses, increasing from about 1.8 million in 2025 to 3.13 million in 2026. These businesses use the platform to receive digital payments from customers. Additionally, the number of consumer credit customers grew to 17.7 million from 7.9 million, along with 18.1 million Fuliza borrowing customers, showing the scale of digital credit services available through M-PESA.

Safaricom emphasized the importance of responsible lending as the platform expanded, with digital credit products using data-driven eligibility and affordability assessments, supported by artificial intelligence models subject to validation and human oversight.

The company also recorded growth in savings and investment services, with active wealth-management customers increasing to 2.2 million from 628,244, and assets under management rising to Ksh21.1 billion from Ksh9.8 billion. Safaricom's ultimate goal was to enable customers to use digital services for more than just payments, aiming to help them participate fully in the digital economy and benefit from the opportunities technology creates. This was according to Fawzia Ali-Kimanthi, Safaricom's Chief Consumer Business Officer.