KCB M-Pesa maintenance in Kenya runs past its 25 October deadline; bank gives no restoration time

KCB said on 25 October that scheduled maintenance on KCB M-Pesa, the savings and loans account it offers to Safaricom M-Pesa customers, was still underway, although the work had been due to end at 6am that day. "The scheduled KCB M-PESA maintenance is still underway," the bank said, as quoted by the Kenyan news site The Kenya Times.

"Our technical team is working to restore normal service as soon as possible," KCB said. It gave no time for the service to return. The bank apologised for the outage and put it down to ongoing system upgrades.

The bank announced the maintenance on 23 October, setting it for 8pm on 24 October to 6am on 25 October, and advised customers to complete urgent transactions before it began.

Customers said they could not withdraw or deposit money, see their savings balances, take or manage loans, or move money between KCB M-Pesa and M-Pesa. One customer wrote to the bank's X account: "What's the hold-up with maintenance for over 8 hours?"

The overrun followed repeated interruptions to KCB M-Pesa between 19 and 22 October. Safaricom Care, Safaricom's customer service, said publicly that the service had an issue on 20 October.

In that earlier episode, some customers said money they withdrew to M-Pesa was deducted from their KCB M-Pesa accounts but did not appear in their M-Pesa balances. They said they waited between 12 and 24 hours, and in a few cases up to 48 hours, for the money to be returned or credited.

KCB M-Pesa is a loans and savings product offered exclusively by KCB Bank Kenya Ltd to Safaricom M-Pesa customers. It is activated by dialling *334# and choosing Loans and Savings, then KCB M-Pesa, or through the M-Pesa app. Users must be registered Safaricom M-Pesa customers with a valid Kenyan national ID.

Capital FM reported on 11 May that KCB M-Pesa loan disbursements rose 30.3 per cent to KSh 73.8 billion and its revenue rose to KSh 1 billion.

KCB lists its customer care lines as 0711 087000 and 0732 187000, with WhatsApp on 0711 087087. Customers can also go to any KCB Bank branch in Kenya.