[kictanet] How Safaricom lost its way

[Mwendwa Kivuva]

It was evening of 7th December 2018.

Consumers had challenges using mpesa from around 6.40pm.

I tried paying for a product, but did not get a response for around 40
minutes. Then, I got this SMS:

"M-PESA is not able to process your request. Go to M-PESA>My account>Update
menu>M-PESA PIN>Send. Then try again."

Then this

"MPESA is experiencing delays, and is not able to accept your request.
Please wait for 10 minutes before trying again."

Then finally after an hour, reality hit home:

"MPESA is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience caused."

At this point, people were stranded in weird places. Car owners were
stranded at petrol stations having ordered full tank hoping to pay with the
often reliable MPESA. They had to park their car as they sought alternative
ways to settle their bills. Revelers at the many entertainment joints had
extended hours trying to pay their bills. Patients at hospitals were turned
away. Queues and queues of Shoppers at supermarkets left their full baskets
at tills. Online platforms were not spared either. The shopping carts were
abandoned.

I was stranded like the rest, and finally managed to pay with the mpesa at
8.08pm. See, I was determined. I had consumed products, and I did not have
any alternative way to pay. That is how successful Safaricom has managed to
make Mpesa part of our lives.

At around 9.24pm, Safaricom sent this SMS

"M-PESA is undergoing scheduled maintenance."

Of course that downtime was not a scheduled maintenance. So now a respected
company with a top notch communications team had resorted to small lies
that add no value to their brand. Desperate times truly calls for desperate
measures. An unexpected downtime is not the same as scheduled maintenance.
Scheduled maintenance is communicated early in advance to all parties. This
was not the case with this particular scenario.

Back to my payment, I manged to sneak in the payment in the midst of the
"scheduled maintenance". But the deductions of my mpesa balance were
completely off. I informed the establishment. They investigate from their
system (which is just mpesa SMSes from their feature phone), and them too
had got one message indicating my payment.

My previous balance did not add up when the current purchase is included.
It was way less. The mpesa statement could also not reconcile where the
difference of my balance had gone. It only showed one transaction. So for
example, if I had a balance of Ksh20,000, and make a purchase of Ksh5,000,
the balance should be Ksh15,000. But now my balance read Ksh10,000. Today
is Tuesday, 11th December, and I'm yet to be united with my funds.

It's good the CS Hon Mucheru has asked for a systems audit of the mpesa
platform. In the audit, they should capture how many transactions were
eronouse, and where users' balances disappeared to. It may be mischievous
individuals carting our balances the NHIF and KPC way.
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