Safaricom to Conduct Largest M-PESA Upgrade Yet, Paving the Way for the Future of Fintech

Safaricom has announced the biggest M-PESA upgrade in a decade, introducing a new Fintech 2.0 core platform that promises scalability, resilience, and AI-driven innovation. The move marks the most significant transformation of the service since 2015, cementing M-PESA’s role as the backbone of Africa’s digital economy.

Fintech 2.0: The Core of the Upgrade

At the heart of this transformation is Fintech 2.0, a next-generation core platform designed to expand capacity and enhance resilience while unlocking new AI-powered features. The upgrade raises transaction handling from 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second, with the potential to scale up to 12,000 transactions as demand increases. Safaricom has also introduced active-active architecture across multiple hosting sites, ensuring minimal service interruptions and greater reliability.

AI at the Core

The Fintech 2.0 platform comes equipped with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities that strengthen fraud detection, enable self-healing infrastructure, and power real-time monitoring. Its cloud-native foundation ensures instant scalability, higher performance, and faster deployment of new services, giving Safaricom the flexibility to innovate at speed.

As part of this transition, Safaricom has announced a scheduled M-PESA system upgrade on Monday, 22nd September 2025 from 0:30 AM to 3:30 AM. During this period, all M-PESA services including airtime purchase will be temporarily unavailable. The company emphasized that the timing was carefully chosen to minimize inconvenience to customers.

Since its launch 18 years ago, M-PESA has evolved from a simple mobile money transfer service into Africa’s most extensive fintech ecosystem. Today, it powers payments, savings, credit, insurance, remittances, and e-commerce. The Fintech 2.0 upgrade aims to sustain this growth trajectory while preparing M-PESA for the demands of the next decade.

The Bigger Picture

With this upgrade, M-PESA is laying the groundwork for the next generation of digital financial services in Africa. By enhancing resilience and embedding AI at its core, Safaricom is ensuring that the platform remains secure, scalable, and future-ready, while staying true to its mission of making financial services simple, accessible, and inclusive.