Safaricom’s popular payments platform M-Pesa was offline on Thursday, affecting mobile money transfers and payments to Kenyan companies including major banks and utilities.
Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, Absa Bank Kenya, NCBA Group and Kenya Power said M-Pesa payments and transfers were unavailable.
“We are experiencing a system hitch due to a network breakdown from our service provider,” Kenya Power said in an alert to customers. NCBA told its clients “M-Pesa services are currently unavailable”. Safaricom was not immediately available for comment.
The platform facilitates transactions of about KSh90-billion shillings (R11.4-billion) daily, CEO Peter Ndegwa said earlier this month. The telecommunications company’s value is equivalent to 47% of the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s market capitalisation.
Separately, Kenya’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday it could not issue e-visas due to a “challenge” in the government’s online platform.
“Over the past one week, there have been unsuccessful cyberattack attempts targeting both the government and the private sector,” the communications ministry said in a separate statement.
Kenya’s e-citizen portal was bombarded with extraordinary requests intended to clog it, but both privacy and data weren’t compromised, the ministry said.
Read: M-Pesa, Visa to offer virtual card in global payments drive
The attack was by hackers who identified themselves as Anonymous Sudan, Nation Media reported on its website, without saying how it got the information. — Bella Genga and David Herbling, with Helen Nyambura, (c) 2023 Reuters