Shoppers stranded following Mpesa outage

For a long time two things have been responsible for bringing Nairobians to a standstill; rains and power blackout. Over the weekend though as the nation would come to learn, the above two issues have been overthrown by Mpesa, the mobile money platform ran by Safaricom.

On Saturday evening, Mpesa experienced a systems failure that saw scores of city dwellers, who rely on the Lipa na Mpesa service to pay bills and buy goods stranded. 

Stranded Mpesa users took to social media to air their frustrations and share pictures of abandoned shopping in supermarkets, passengers stranded in Taxis and others at pubs and restaurants.

Safaricom issued a statement two hours later saying the Mpesa outage was occasioned by a systems update and apologized for any inconvenience caused to customers.

Below are some of the complaints shared on Twitter.