Safaricom has decided to conduct a major upgrade of the M-PESA platform over the next three weeks in order to offer more value to customers and partners.

Since the launch of the platform 10 years ago, it will be the third major upgrade and the first since the company migrated the platform to Kenya in 2015.

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“As a result of the upgrade process, all M-PESA services will be unavailable for a period of two hours on 30th June 2017, from 1.00 A.M. to 3.00 AM. International Money Transfer (IMT), KCB M-PESA, M-Shwari and M-Kesho services will be unavailable on 5th July 2017 for a period of two hours, from 1.00 A.M. to 3.00 AM,” the company said in its press statement.

The changeover to the new platform will be conducted in mid-July, resulting in a 12 hour outage. In the lead to the changeover, the company will also sequentially withdraw a number of M-PESA services.

Following the upgrade, the company intends to launch additional features and enhancements on the service, which will include M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA implementation in the Safaricom App.

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said: “Ten years ago, we began the journey of M-PESA by focusing on our customers’ need to send money home. Since then, we have experienced tremendous growth as the platform has grown to provide even more value to the ecosystem. This upgrade paves the way for the next phase of M-PESA and will enable the service deliver even more value for our customers and partners.

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Also, the upgradation will lead to more number of partners offering their services on the platform as integration into M-PESA will be made easy through a new set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

“In addition to providing for new customer features, automation of different M-PESA procedures will eliminate the current requirement for customers and merchants to make such requests to the call centre,” the company added.