M-Pesa, Kenya’s most widely used mobile money service, will go offline for three hours on Monday, September 22, 2025, as Safaricom carries out a planned system upgrade. The downtime will take place between 12:30 AM and 3:30 AM, affecting millions of customers across the country.
Safaricom explained that the system maintenance is part of its long-term investment in improving service delivery. According to the company, the upgrade will boost the platform’s security, reliability, and performance, ensuring smoother and safer transactions for its users.
“M-Pesa is at the heart of Kenya’s digital economy. This exercise allows us to enhance capacity and maintain worry-free services for all our customers,” the notice read in part
During the three-hour maintenance period, all M-Pesa services will be unavailable. This includes:
- Sending and receiving money
- Paying bills
- Purchasing airtime and data bundles
- Lipa na M-Pesa transactions
- Business-to-business (B2B) and bank-to-M-Pesa transfers
Customers have been urged to plan ahead by completing important transactions before the downtime begins.
Safaricom’s Commitment to Customers
Safaricom noted that the timing of the upgrade was chosen carefully to minimise disruptions. By scheduling the exercise in the early morning hours, the telco hopes to reduce the impact on businesses and individuals who rely on M-Pesa throughout the day.
This is not the first time Safaricom has announced such downtime. Over the years, the company has conducted several upgrades to accommodate Kenya’s growing demand for mobile money services, which now reach over 30 million active users.
Customers are advised to take the following steps ahead of the outage:
- Top up airtime in advance if you expect to make calls or buy data bundles during the affected hours.
- Settle urgent payments early, especially bills or money transfers needed before morning.
- Notify businesses or clients if transactions may be delayed until services resume.
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As M-Pesa undergoes this short pause, the bigger picture is clear investments in stronger systems today are designed to keep Kenya’s financial heartbeat running securely tomorrow.
