M-Pesa users to retrieve numbers in a new move

By Kamau Macharia

Users of Safaricom’s money transfer service M-Pesa will in the coming weeks swap their SIM cards and take up new ones that will enable them to retrieve the number of the person they are sending money to directly from the phone book.

Currently users have to manually key in the phone number of the person they are sending money to, a process prone to errors and has resulted in a number of customers sending the money to unintended parties.

Joseph said the new SIM cards would help in reducing the number of erroneous transactions. He added the issue could only be corrected on the SIM card’s menu rather than the network and hence the reason the firm had to bring in new SIM cards.

Small Fees

"The SIM cards are already here and we will launch a campaign for SIM card replacement among M-Pesa customers in the coming weeks," he said.

"The process of designing and making them cost us about $1 for every SIM card and when you consider the over 12 million M-Pesa customers, this was costly on our side. We will be charging a small fee for the replacement to partly recover the cost."

Joseph spoke yesterday when Safaricom signed a partnership with Uchumi supermarkets.

The deal will enable Consumers can now use M-Pesa to pay for their shopping following a partnership between the operator and local retail chains.

The operator also entered into a similar deal with Naivas supermarkets and said it was working on getting more retailers to accept M-Pesa as a form of payment.

"We are looking at partnering with other supermarkets, convenience stores and chemists to enable M-Pesa customers pay for what they buy using the services," he said.

He added that the transactions would not be charged additional fees.