PayPal to MPESA transactions will be interrupted next week due to a planned maintenance on the platform. This was quietly announced as a notice on their official site.
“Please expect a pause in the service between 5:05 AM to 7:05 AM Kenyan Time on the 5th of October 2020 due to a planned maintenance. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused,” it says. 5th of October is Monday next week.
If you are a regular user of this service, you should prepare yourself for the eventual interruption of this service which is being done quite early in the morning.
Interruptions like this are not unusual but there is a high chance it won’t affect you thanks to the timing of the maintenance period.
Safaricom announced this partnership with PayPal two years ago as an alternative to withdrawing money from the international service. It allowed MPESA users to receive money from any PayPal account across the world in real time which was great news for people that use PayPal a lot. MPESA is used by over 25 million Kenyans of which some transact using PayPal which was a market waiting to be served natively by the two companies. Their main competitor is the Equity PayPal arrangement that has been on the market for a while now.
