Government’s digital payments platform eCitizen down for days

[Photo: Courtesy]

The Government’s digital payments platform eCitizen has been down for several days now, denying millions of Kenyans access to crucial public services.

Several users yesterday took to social media to express outrage that the platform that allows Kenyans access to crucial services such as business registration, driving licence application and renewal, and land rate payments could go unattended for that long.

Error message

Some reported receiving blank pages or error messages when they attempted to log into the site.

“I have been unable to do anything on the platform for the past two weeks in relation to company registry matters,” wrote a Mr Ali Hussein on one of the platform’s social media pages. 

“It (eCitizen) has been down since morning, only returning an error message,” wrote another user. In some instances, users making payments through the M-Pesa paybill number 206206 reported that it was taking several hours and sometimes days to have their payments validated. Another user, who identified herself only as Caroline, reported paying Sh1,750 last week, but the payment had yet to reflect on her account. Our calls to the customer care desk went unanswered.

Last week, users were informed that the issues had been resolved, with those who had made payments through mobile money asked to give their transaction details.