Safaricom has confirmed a service disruption affecting its M-PESA platform after customers reported being unable to complete mobile money transactions for more than an hour early Tuesday morning, August 25, 2026.
The disruption triggered complaints from customers on social media, with some reporting difficulties accessing or using the mobile money service.
One customer, David (@king__davie), raised the alarm on X at around 2:53am, saying: “M-Pesa down for the last one hour.” He tagged Safaricom Care seeking clarification on the disruption.
Safaricom Care acknowledged the complaint and confirmed that its technical teams were working to restore the service.
“Good morning @king__davie, we are aware of the issue and faulting is ongoing to restore service. Please bear with us as we deal,” Safaricom Care responded.
The company did not immediately provide details on the cause of the disruption or indicate how many customers were affected.
M-PESA disruption
The outage comes at a time when M-PESA has become deeply embedded in Kenya’s day-to-day economy, supporting person-to-person transfers, payments to businesses, bill payments and other financial transactions.
Safaricom said in March 2026 that M-PESA had reached 40 million customers, marking another milestone for the mobile money platform nearly two decades after its launch.
The scale of Kenya’s reliance on mobile money is also reflected in data from the Central Bank of Kenya.
By June 2026, Kenya had 94.2 million registered mobile money accounts, with agent cash-in and cash-out transactions valued at about KSh682.46 billion during the month.
This makes disruptions to major mobile money platforms particularly significant for households, traders and businesses that depend on digital payments.
Customers report transaction difficulties
During the Tuesday morning disruption, customers took to social media to seek answers after transactions failed or the M-PESA service became inaccessible.
Another social media user, posting through Flickshub TV, said they had transferred money from M-PESA to a bank account but were unable to establish what had happened after their M-PESA balance appeared to show zero.
The complaints underscored the uncertainty that can arise when transactions are interrupted before customers receive confirmation.
Safaricom has previously experienced M-PESA disruptions, including planned maintenance and technical outages.
In such instances, the company has advised customers to wait for services to be restored rather than repeatedly attempting transactions that could potentially create confusion around pending payments.
As of Tuesday morning, Safaricom had acknowledged the latest fault and said restoration efforts were ongoing.
The telecommunications company had not, at the time of publication, issued a detailed public explanation on the cause of the outage or confirmed when all affected M-PESA services would be fully restored.
