Safaricom to hide Identity when using Lipa na M-Pesa

Safaricom is set to add a layer of security and hide personal information of Lipa na M-Pesa users. You have probably received promotional messages from places you have paid using Lipa na M-pesa, this comes as a result of your information being shared with the party receiving the payment. Sometimes this information end up being sold to third party companies without consent. A survey by consultancy Ernst & Young (EY) shows that 41 percent of firms transferred their clients’ data to third-party service providers. More than half or 53 percent of these companies or 21.7 percent of firms captured in the EY survey did not seek the approval of their customers.

This has been acted upon by Safaricom by hiding names and Showing only first few digits and last digits of your contact information to vendors thereby hiding your information. Tjis will help protect users from faudsters and advertisers. This however benefits Safaricom as they gain more control of advertising.

Kenya has been ranked 3rd among countries receiving spam messages avaraging 102 messages per month per subscriber according to data from Truecaller, the Stockholm-based caller identification app.