Easther Waititu, Chief Financial Officer at Safaricom PLC
Safaricom has announced the most significant upgrade of the M-PESA platform since 2015 marking a major milestone in the service’s 18-year journey of driving financial inclusion and digital. transformation.
The upgrade introduces Fintech 2.0, a next-generation core platform designed to strengthen resilience, expand capacity, and unlock advanced, AI-driven innovation. This transformation positions M-PESA to meet the growing demands of Africa’s digital economy while preparing for future opportunities.
“This upgrade is a bold investment in the future of M-PESA and reaffirmation of our commitment to innovation, resilience and customer trust. By moving to Fintech 2.0, we are unlocking a platform that not only scales to meet today’s demands but also anticipates tomorrow’s opportunities”. Said Dr. Peter Ndegwa, Group CEO, Safaricom.
The new M-PESA Core will expand capacity from 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second, with the potential to scale up to 12,000 transactions as demand grows. It will also introduce an active-active architecture across multiple hosting sites, guaranteeing higher resilience and minimal service interruption.
The platform embeds advanced artificial intelligence to strengthen fraud detection, enable self-healing, and power real-time monitoring. Its cloud-native foundation ensures higher performance, instant scalability, and faster deployment of new products.
Over the years, M-PESA has grown from a simple money transfer service into Africa’s largest fintech ecosystem, powering payments, savings, credit, insurance, remittances, and e-commerce. The launch of Fintech 2.0 is designed to sustain this growth and prepare the platform for the future, enabling Safaricom to deliver smarter, faster and more secure financial solutions to individuals and businesses alike.
With this migration, M-PESA is laying the foundation for the next generation of innovation. The upgrade ensures the platform remains robust enough to support Africa’s digital economy, while keeping its core promise, which is to make financial services simple, accessible and inclusive fo9r all.