NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, April 27, 2015

After two years of intercontinental conference calls, eight test runs and countless hours put in by 320 consultants, Safaricom has successfully migrated its mobile money platform to its data center in Kenya and is expecting to provide better services.

The old platform, known as G1 within Safaricom ranks, was hosted at Rackspace in Germany and was plagued with issues including fiber optic outages and problems with transit providers, causing users to experience delays in the service. The new platform is known as G2.

“We are alerted immediately on any issues and are able to resolve issues instantly instead of having to report back to Germany for resolution, which previously could take up to 30 minutes,” said Ken Okwero, a department head for products and services at Safaricom.

Problems with G1 included delays in the process of cancelling a transmission of funds when a user has sent money to the wrong person. Such transfer reversals could take an hour.

“We can effect customers’ reversals more efficiently,” Okwero added. The new platform also should offer enhanced system stability due to reduced points of failure, and allow users to enjoy a wider range of products and services on the company’s MPesa Platform, he said.