Safaricom, Kenya’s largest public firm by market capitalisation, plans to double the capability of its M-PESA cellular cash platform by the top of 2026, a transfer that might fortify the service because the spine of Kenya’s monetary system.
Safaricom’s head of IT, Felix Rop, mentioned in an interview on August 8 that the corporate will broaden M-PESA’s capability to deal with as much as 8,000 transactions per second — equal to 252 billion in a yr — from its present 4,000 per second. The improve comes amid rising demand for digital funds and growing scrutiny over the resilience of monetary infrastructure in East Africa’s largest financial system.
“By subsequent yr [2026], round April, we must be having a capability of 6,000 transactions per second on the system. In fact, it’s a progressive supply,” mentioned Rop. “And we must always have nearly 8,000 per second as capability no matter whether or not clients come to make use of or not by the top of subsequent yr.”
Safaricom has dedicated greater than KES40 billion ($309.6 million) to M-PESA upgrades, signalling a shift from product improvement to constructing funds infrastructure at par with international monetary networks.
“M-Pesa 2.0 is the following section of the M-Pesa platform,” mentioned chief government Peter Ndegwa in Could. “It’s about investing for capability, for performance, for stability, and in addition for resilience, which is about guaranteeing that clients can at all times depend on our ecosystem.”
Launched in 2007, M-Pesa has grown into Kenya’s dominant funds system, processing greater than 21 million every day transactions and embedding itself in on a regular basis life, from utility payments to highschool charges and enterprise payrolls. Its final main improve was in 2021, when Safaricom moved from Launch 4 to Launch 6 to enhance efficiency.
M-PESA is likely one of the most secure cellular cash platforms. Nonetheless, its executives say the calls for of immediately’s digital financial system—the place outages set off on the spot public backlash and cyber dangers are intensifying—require additional fortification.
“We’re going into a brand new fashionable M-PESA coming quickly, the place we’ll now change it to 100 per cent cloud native,” Rop mentioned. “We’re organising a non-public cloud throughout the identical structure, absolutely resilient.”
M-PESA has advanced from a client product to a nationwide funds utility, an infrastructure that should at all times be obtainable. In 2024, the platform processed an estimated KES 40 trillion ($309.4 billion) in transactions, highlighting its function as a key a part of Kenya’s monetary system and one of many largest cellular cash platforms globally.
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