Safaricom Plc’s popular payments platform M-Pesa was offline on Thursday, affecting mobile-money transfers and payments to Kenyan companies including major banks and utilities.
(Bloomberg) — Safaricom Plc’s popular payments platform M-Pesa was offline on Thursday, affecting mobile-money transfers and payments to Kenyan companies including major banks and utilities.
Standard Chartered Bank Kenya Ltd., Absa Bank Kenya Plc, NCBA Group Plc and Kenya Power Plc said M-Pesa payments and transfers were unavailable.
“We are experiencing a system hitch due to a network breakdown from our service provider,” Kenya Power said in an alert to customers. NCBA told its clients “M-Pesa services are currently unavailable.” Safaricom was not immediately available for comment.
The platform facilitates transactions of about 90 billion shillings ($633 million) daily, Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa said earlier this month. The telecommunications company’s value is equivalent to 47% of the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s market capitalization.
Separately, Kenya’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday it could not issue e-visas due to a “challenge” in the government’s online platform.
“Over the past one week, there have been unsuccessful cyber-attack attempts targeting both the government and the private sector,” the Information, Communications and Digital Economy Ministry said in a separate statement.
Kenya’s e-citizen portal was bombarded with extraordinary requests intended to clog it, but both privacy and data weren’t compromised, the ministry said.
The attack was by hackers who identified themselves as Anonymous Sudan, Nation Media reported on its website, without saying how it got the information
Read more: Hackers Targeted Microsoft for Sudan. Experts Say It Was Russia
–With assistance from Helen Nyambura.
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