M-PESA Customer Number 9,399,999

Well not exactly 9,399,99, but I did join the other 9 million plus M-PESA users when I signed up for M-PESA two weeks ago. It was a pleasant experience the service from the agent was great.

I had bought a Safaricom pre-paid mobile phone account and phone, during my visit to Nairobi for my Christmas break in December 2009, at the Phone Link shop at Yaya Center. The Safaricom SIM card included the M-PESA service menu. This was the first time in 5 years that I was signing up with Safaricom. I held a Safaricom line then for about 3 months when trying to apply for a job with Safaricom but dumped the mobile phone account when I did not hear back from them. My mobile phone experience did start off with Safaricom in 1999 but I soon switched to Kencell (aka Celetl aka Zain) and have stayed loyal despite their many name changes.

During my my next visit to Nairobi, two weeks ago, I returned to the shop which is also an M-PESA agent to sign up for the M-PESA service.

I showed my Kenya identity card (ID) which includes my name and date of birth that are required by Safaricom. Other documents that are accepted are passport, military ID, diplomatic ID and alien ID. I also gave the lady my phone number.

All the pleasant lady working at the Phone Link shop used was her phone; very impressive, no computer. I presume her agent menu is different and include additional features.

I received an SMS prompting me to activate the M-PESA account by providing me with a start PIN key. I selected a four digit secret PIN code which is required for the M-PESA transactions. I received another SMS confirming that my M-pesa account was now active, my balance was KES 0 and the secret word that I had been assigned that I would use when identifying myself to the M-PESA customer service. It took no more than 5 minutes to get set up.

I returned to Phone Link at Yaya Center a week later to deposit money in my M-PESA account. I gave my phone number, showed my ID card, indicated how much I want to deposit and gave the cash to the lady. There was a queue with 4 people ahead of me; each person took not more than an average of 3-4 minutes. She wrote this information down on a ledger book and asked me to sign and then entered the information on her phone. I then received an SMS confirmation for the deposit; it included an 8 alpha-numeric code, the date, the time, the amount of cash given to the M-PESA agent, and my new M-PESA account balance.

Next was the fun part of using this technology to pay my debts to relatives and for my taxi ride to the airport. To transfer cash, in the M-PESA menu on my phone, I selected transfer money, typed in the phone number of the person I was sending money and the amount I wanted to send. A message comes prompting me to confirm the phone number I am sending the money to and the amount. Once I clicked okay than the money was transferred. Safaricom have since announced an upgrade to the M-PESA service allowing users to pull up the phone number from their mobile phone Contacts or Phone Book rather than type the number they are sending the money to.

A few minutes later I received an SMS confirmation for the transfer; it included an 8 alpha-numeric code, the amount sent, the name of the recipient, the mobile phone number, the date, the time and my new M-PESA account balance.

I experienced a slight delay of half a second or so when using the M-PESA menu, which threw me off initially, but you do get used to this.

The M-PESA menu is bilingual with a selection of English and Kiswahili.

The costs for transferring money to another M-PESA user is KES30 (USD $0.40. A complete list of the M-PESA tariffs is available at the Safaricom website. These fees are modest in comparison to other traditional money transfer services.

The maximum account a user can have on their M-PESA account is KES 50,000 (USD $650) and the maximum daily transaction allowed is KES 70,000 (USD $912) . There is no minimum balance required. Interestingly the fee for checking your account balance is KES 1 (USD$0.013). To use the M-PESA account the phone account with Safaricom needs to be active. It needs to be used within a period of120 days. I will wait to see if mine remains active as I travel to Kenya once every three months. Otherwise I stand the risk of the mobile phone account being deactivated and losing the balance of cash on the M-PESA account.

Other features offered by M-PESA are withdrawing cash, buying airtime, paying bills, buying goods and ATM withdrawals.

I look forward to continued use of this great service upon my return to Kenya later this year.