In a move to avoid customers being inconvenienced through accidental withdrawals at a wrong agent, Safaricom has added a Store Number for M-PESA Agent withdrawals to reduce accidental withdrawals, effective by press time.
The firm also announced an automatic update to allow its customers get the feature immediately for their own safety. The firm says that M-PESA customers are assured their money is safe and updates are being rolled out with no downtime.
In the new M-PESA agent withdrawal process, a customer will be required to key in the Agent Number, Store Number, Amount and PIN. The details will then be validated to ensure that funds are withdrawn from the correct agent.
Safaricom has already deployed the solution on the M-PESA App, M-PESA Business App, M-PESA on *334#, and is in the process of updating customer SIM cards with the new menu. Customers who receive the SIM update will get an automatic M-PESA prompt on their phones to accept the new menu.
Customers can also update their SIM cards manually to download the latest menu by going to the M-PESA menu on their phone, Select My Account, Update Customer Menu, Enter M-PESA PIN, then Send.
Safaricom now has capacity to roll out new features after updating the M-PESA platform to enable upgrading without the need for a downtime. The company targets a 99.99% availability of the M-PESA platform or less than 53 minutes of system unavailability in a year.