Safaricom’s M-Shwari platform has once again exposed the weakness of over-reliance on mobile money services after a major outage left thousands of Kenyans stranded without access to their savings.
What began as a technical hitch on Wednesday evening quickly escalated into a full-blown crisis, with users unable to withdraw their own funds or carry out urgent transactions.
For a service that has marketed itself as reliable and secure, the disruption has left a bitter taste, and many are openly questioning whether Safaricom has grown too careless with the trust of its customers.
The company admitted to technical challenges affecting M-Shwari, asking Kenyans not to deposit any money until the issue is resolved.
That advice in itself was an admission of failure, because a financial service provider should never reach the point of warning people not to use its platform.
Yet here was Safaricom, effectively telling millions of Kenyans that their savings are not safe to move in and out of the system. This is a damning reflection of negligence in safeguarding a platform that holds people’s money.
Social media platforms were flooded with angry messages, as users shared screenshots of failed withdrawals, missing balances, and funds that appeared to vanish.
Many accused Safaricom of taking customer loyalty for granted, pointing out that such a massive outage shows how little the company has invested in ensuring the stability of its financial systems.
Others lamented that they were stranded in emergencies, unable to access the very money they trusted Safaricom to keep safe. When a company controls such a large share of digital savings and lending, such failures cannot be brushed off as simple technical errors.
The telco’s attempt to calm the situation by assuring that all funds are secure has done little to rebuild trust. Kenyans have seen this pattern before outages, apologies, and promises yet the same problems keep repeating.
This latest disruption has laid bare the fragility of a system that millions depend on for their day-to-day survival.
In reality, it shows how Safaricom has grown complacent, more focused on profits and expanding products than ensuring the backbone of its financial services can withstand pressure.
Experts have already advised Kenyans to diversify their savings and not keep all their money in one mobile platform. This advice may be sound, but it also reveals the glaring problem, Safaricom has failed to guarantee basic reliability, forcing people to look elsewhere for security.
For a company that has positioned itself as the cornerstone of Kenya’s digital economy, this is a huge embarrassment.
Until Safaricom takes responsibility and invests seriously in the stability of M-Shwari, millions of Kenyans will remain at risk. The outage is not just an inconvenience; it is a warning sign that the country’s over-dependence on one giant telco is dangerous. Trust once lost is difficult to regain, and Safaricom is now facing the consequences of putting profit before reliability.
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