Safaricom PLC has announced a scheduled system upgrade for M-PESA, its largest since 2015, marking a significant milestone in the service’s 18-year history. The maintenance is set to take place on Monday, September 22, 2025, from 0:30 AM to 3:30 AM, during which all M-PESA services, including airtime purchases, will be temporarily unavailable.
The upgrade introduces Fintech 2.0, a next-generation core platform designed to enhance resilience, expand capacity, and enable advanced, AI-driven innovation. According to Dr. Peter Ndegwa, Group CEO of Safaricom, this is a “bold investment in the future of M-PESA” that will allow the platform to meet the growing demands of Africa’s digital economy.
The new M-PESA Core will increase transaction capacity from 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second, with the potential to scale up to 12,000. It will also feature an active-active architecture across multiple hosting sites to guarantee higher resilience and minimal service interruptions.
Additionally, the platform will integrate advanced AI to strengthen fraud detection, enable self-healing, and power real-time monitoring. Its cloud-native foundation will ensure higher performance, instant scalability, and faster deployment of new products.
Safaricom has apologized for any inconvenience the temporary service outage may cause, noting that the timing was chosen to minimize disruption to its customers. The company highlighted that M-PESA has grown from a simple money transfer service into Africa’s largest fintech ecosystem, powering a wide range of financial solutions.