Safaricom has introduced a feature on M-PESA that will allow customers to confirm who they are sending money to. The feature went live in September and is accessible to some customers. It will be available to all M-PESA users by the end of October.
The way the feature works is that after you complete the M-PESA sending process a pop-up appears on the screen with the name of the owner of the M-PESA line that you are sending money to. You are then given 15 seconds to stop the M-PESA transaction if you so wish by inputing the number 1 in the pop-up box and pressing send.
The M-PESA feature, dubbed hakikisha, will be available when customers send money to other customers, when making payments via Lipa na M-PESA and when making withdrawals.
This feature is long overdue and M-PESA users in the past have had to call Safaricom in order to reverse wrong transactions and the process took time. Going forward one can hope that an M-PESA app will be introduced soon to further make it convenient to use M-PESA especially in the age of smartphones.