Corporate News
An M-Pesa outlet. Installation of M-Pesa servers locally is expected to
end years of foreign hosting, cited for delayed response to service.
PHOTO | FILE
By OKUTTAH MARK, mokuttah@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- 19.95m - The number of people who have subscribed to M-Pesa from 14.9 million in 2012.
The transfer of M-Pesa servers from Germany to Kenya
will be complete by the beginning of April, promising users of the
mobile money transfer service a more reliable system.
The ongoing installation of M-Pesa servers locally is
expected to end nearly eight years of foreign hosting, which has at
times been cited for delayed response to service interruptions.
Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore says the new M-Pesa platform is currently
undergoing test runs expected to be completed by end of March.
“We will be running a parallel network from time
to time while undergoing the test runs, thereafter we will have a
complete switch over. We expect the new platform located here will have
bigger capacity, be much faster and allow other merchants to connect
directly to the platform,” said Mr Collymore in an interview.
The process of installing the M-Pesa servers
locally began 18 months ago. It is expected to minimise service outages
that occur whenever the undersea fibre optic cables which relay
information to Germany and back are damaged.
Local hosting is also expected to save costs for
Safaricom, which will now be in charge of maintenance of the system as
opposed to currently when it pays fees to British telecommunications
firm Vodafone, which is its biggest shareholder.
Mr Collymore said the new platform would come with
additional functions that allow for M-Pesa’s integration with those of
other vendors in banking, micro-insurance and retail sectors, especially
supermarkets. He, however, said it too early to comment on whether
Safaricom will pass on the realised savings to customers in form of
lower M-Pesa tariffs.
Safaricom has invested heavily on building the new
infrastructure. A higher processing capacity is expected to enable
Safaricom clients to settle post-paid electricity bills, insurance
premiums and bank payments in real-time.
It currently takes 48 hours for payments made to
Kenya Power to reflect on the electricity distributor’s systems while
those made to the National Hospital Insurance Fund take 76 hours.
The current M-Pesa platform handles between 200 to
300 transactions per second but after migration the rate is expected to
go up to 600 transactions per second.
The upgrade and relocation of the platform locally
comes at a time when M-Pesa is also eyeing bulk government payments such
as pensions and salaries paid to beneficiaries in remote locations.
The mobile money transfer service is also expected
to come under increased competition with the licensing of four Mobile
Virtual Network Operators (MVNO); including Equitel, Tangaza Pesa and
ZionCell. China’s Huawei has been building the second-generation
platform, which is also designed to have improve re-routing of traffic
when the system fails.
Safaricom has recorded growth of M-Pesa subscribers
to 19.95 million from 14.9 million in 2012 and its agents to 80,335
from 39,401 in the period.
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