By Pascal Ndegwa - Reporter
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Kenya, October 28, 2026 - On the morning of 28 October 2026, M-Pesa stopped working properly for several hours. The problem began around 2 a.m. and stretched into the busy early hours when people travel to work and traders open for business. Suddenly, many Kenyans could not send money, pay bus fares, or complete simple till payments.
This was more than an inconvenience. M-Pesa moves an enormous amount of money every day. Safaricom’s own figures show the service handles about 114 billion shillings in transactions daily, with more than 127 million separate payments. When even a few peak morning hours freeze, billions of shillings cannot move on time.
Most of that money does not disappear. It is delayed. Once the system recovers, many payments eventually go through. The real cost is the friction. Small traders who rely on same-day payments cannot restock. Matatu and boda operators lose fares. Workers who expected to receive money struggle to get home or buy food. In an economy where millions earn and spend day by day, these delays hurt quickly and quietly.
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Kenya’s large informal sector feels the impact most. Many small businesses and workers depend on M-Pesa as their main way to receive and send money. A temporary freeze slows their cash flow and reduces activity that would otherwise have happened that same morning. Careful estimates put the short-term drag on everyday economic activity in the range of 15 to 35 billion shillings, depending on how heavy the morning traffic was and how quickly payments caught up.
The story matters because M-Pesa is no longer just a phone service. It has become the main circulatory system for ordinary Kenyan life. When it stumbles, the country does not just lose a few hours of convenience. It pays a real, if temporary, cost in delayed work, lost sales, and everyday stress.