M-Pesa set for major system upgrade to enhance capacity
Business
By
Sofia Ali
| Sep 20, 2025
The new system is designed to boost resilience, expand capacity, and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) to combat fraud and power new innovations.
It will increase transaction capacity from 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second, with the potential to scale up to 12,000 transactions as demand grows.
The platform also features an active-active architecture across multiple hosting sites, guaranteeing higher resilience and minimal service interruptions.
Chief Financial Services Officer Esther Masese Waititu said the migration embeds AI to strengthen fraud detection, enable "self-healing," and support real-time monitoring.
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"We have transformed how people transact, save, borrow, and protect their wealth. Moving into the next chapter, this new platform allows us to innovate faster, remain resilient, and deliver more personalised solutions," she said at a press briefing in Nairobi yesterday.
The cloud-native foundation of the new M-Pesa Core will also allow instant scalability and faster deployment of new products.
The telco said this shift to microservices and cloud infrastructure is critical to meet growing demand, with the platform now processing an average of 100 million transactions daily.
Safaricom Group Chief Executive Peter Ndegwa described the upgrade as a landmark in M-Pesa's 18-year journey.
"This upgrade is a bold investment in the future of M-Pesa and a reaffirmation of our commitment to innovation, resilience, and customer trust. By moving to Fintech 2.0, we are unlocking a platform that scales to meet today's demands and anticipates tomorrow's opportunities," he said.
According to Head of Financial Services IT Felix Rop, the migration will take place on September 22 from 12:30am to 3:30am, during which the M-Pesa platform will be temporarily unavailable.
Rop added that the upgrade will introduce multiple data streams within the customer database, enabling Safaricom to better manage downtime emergencies. By segmenting customers into groups, the system can prevent a complete database collapse in the event of disruptions.
Launched in 2007 as a simple money transfer service, M-Pesa has grown into Africa's largest fintech ecosystem, supporting payments, savings, credit, insurance, remittances, and e-commerce.
Safaricom says the Fintech 2.0 platform will anchor the service for the next decade, enabling smarter, faster, and more secure financial solutions while deepening financial inclusion across the continent.