M-Pesa as we know it is coming to an end. For the uninitiated, M-PESA (M for mobile, pesa for money in Swahili) is the world’s most successful mobile money transfer service. Launched in Kenya in 2007 by Safaricom, it allows users to turn their SIM card into a bank account.
For nearly two decades, this system has run on a reliable but rigid architecture. That is about to change.
The first move happened back in September when Safaricom launched a new M-PESA Core which expanded capacity from 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second, with the potential to scale up to 12,000 transactions in what the telco says might be the last ‘shutdown to fix’ model ever for the platform.
For years, Safaricom has had to shut down the entire M-PESA system to fix bugs or upgrade capacity. This model was a necessary evil of the platform’s older architecture. But according to Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa, those dark days are officially over.
In a revealing interview on Trading Bell, Ndegwa unpacked “Fintech 2.0,” a massive architectural overhaul that marks the end of M-PESA as a simple money transfer tool and its rebirth as a resilient, AI-powered digital bank.
The Death of “System Maintenance”
“You’ll never hear ‘M-PESA has been shut for repair or maintenance’,” Ndegwa promised. To achieve this, Safaricom has completely rebuilt the engine room.
The old M-PESA was built on a Monolithic Architecture. Imagine a single, giant block of stone. If you wanted to carve out a new feature or fix a crack, you had to stop everything and work on the whole block.
Felix Rop, Safaricom’s Head of Financial Services IT says with confidence that any failures on the upgraded model would be felt by a very small number of M-PESA’s 35 million customers guaranteeing 99.999 per cent uptime.
To achieve this, Fintech 2.0 moves to Microservices. Imagine the new system as a massive collection of Lego bricks. If one brick (service) needs fixing, Safaricom engineers can simply swap it out while the rest of the structure remains standing.
“If there is a loss [of data or service], you only lose a small part of that database,” Ndegwa explained. This means that if the ‘Bill Pay’ service glitches, ‘Send Money’ will likely keep working perfectly.
From what we can gather, the database will now be split into sections called stripe units separates customers in different pools and in the event there is a problem in one pool, it will be possible for the rest to continue even as the problem is fixed.
New Features
Beyond technical stability, Fintech 2.0 introduces features that change how Kenyans interact socially. Ndegwa jokingly noted that some of these might be “controversial.”
1. The Shared Wallet
“You can share your wallet with your partner, allowing her to use your wallet in your absence,” Ndegwa said with a smile.
While this might spark heated debates in households across the country, the utility is massive. Parents can grant children limited access to a wallet for school fees or pocket money, and couples can manage household expenses from a single pool of funds without incurring transaction fees for moving money back and forth.
2. Social Payments: “Split the Bill”
No more mental math or awkward silence when the waiter brings the card machine. The new app will feature a native “Split the Bill” option. You can go to a restaurant with ten friends, and the app will automatically divide the cost, allowing everyone to pay their share instantly.
3. Tap to Pay
Everyone, myself included have long asked for this feature and now, M-PESA is finally moving closer to the speed of card. The new platform supports “Tap to Pay” functionality, likely utilizing NFC technology or faster QR scanning to reduce the time spent fumbling with PINs at checkout counters. Whether this will finally get Apple to bring over Apple Pay to Kenya remains a big question.
AI-Powered Security
With this new speed comes a need for better security. Ndegwa revealed that Fintech 2.0 is “AI-enabled.”
The system now uses artificial intelligence to monitor transactions in real-time. Instead of waiting for a human to notice a suspicious transfer, the AI can detect fraud patterns, like a sudden drain of funds to a new number, and flag or block them instantly to protect the customer.
Safaricom plans to become a fully-fledged fintech company. By killing the dreaded “maintenance” downtime and introducing social banking features, M-PESA Fintech 2.0 is positioning itself to not just be a wallet, but the central operating system for daily life in Kenya
Discover more from Techspace Africa
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.