Safaricom has begun migrating customers from its standalone M-PESA app to a brand new unified platform, My OneApp, in a consolidation transfer geared toward bringing greater than 10 million customers onto a single interface and defending its fintech dominance from more and more aggressive Kenyan banks.
Kenya’s greatest telco unveiled Safaricom My OneApp on April 2 at its Decode 4.0 engineering summit. The platform, which has been in public beta for a number of months, marks a shift from a fragmented service mannequin to a unified system.
Since April 3, M-PESA app customers have been receiving updates redirecting them to My OneApp, signalling the beginning of a phased migration. The mySafaricom app stays energetic for now, with no confirmed timeline for when legacy apps shall be absolutely retired.
The transfer sits on the centre of Safaricom’s FinTech 2.0 technique, which goals to push the corporate past telecoms right into a broader expertise platform by 2030. By merging the M-PESA and mySafaricom apps with overlapping options, Safaricom is seeking to scale back app switching and pull customers right into a single setting the place behaviour and spending will be tracked extra carefully.
Safaricom didn’t reply to requests for touch upon the shutdown timeline.
Merging the M-PESA app, with over 6.5 million customers, and the mySafaricom app, with below 3 million customers, is a transparent indication of the corporate’s intention to scale back duplication throughout methods. It additionally simplifies its API construction and lays the groundwork for extra superior automation utilizing AI-driven prompts and proposals.
The transfer comes as lenders akin to Fairness Group Holdings and KCB Group enhance their cell apps to match M-PESA’s ease of use, concentrating on funds, transfers, and financial savings merchandise that when sat firmly inside Safaricom’s ecosystem.
“The fragmented app technique was a legacy of how the corporate grew; telco first, then finance,” stated an inside Safaricom supply who requested to not be named, as they don’t seem to be authorised to talk for the corporate.
Working two separate apps created silos for customers and an additional load for engineers.
“Sustaining two separate codebases, two safety protocols, and two person journeys was turning into a legal responsibility,” a Safaricom engineer, who requested to not be named, stated.
A extra highly effective platform
Constructed on a cloud-native structure able to processing 6,000 transactions per second, My OneApp is designed to considerably outperform its predecessors. The app hosts over 80 third-party companies, starting from prepare bookings to M-TIBA medical insurance, permitting Safaricom to gather a platform tax and helpful client information with out the person ever leaving the interface.
In contrast to the previous apps, My OneApp makes use of machine studying to floor fast actions. If a person constantly pays their Kenya Energy invoice on the fifteenth of every month, the app will robotically immediate them to finish the transaction on the house display screen.
The app additionally embeds the brand new Ziidi cash market fund and dealer share-trading instruments straight into the M-PESA stream, positioning Safaricom as a direct competitor to conventional wealth administration corporations.
The success of My OneApp shall be measured by stickiness. Safaricom believes {that a} single interface, accessible through biometric authentication, will enhance common income per person (ARPU) whereas lowering buyer acquisition prices.
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