M-PESA has reduced its daily cash reversal requests from 12,000 to 4,000, a 67% drop, after refining Hakikisha, a confirmation feature that prompts users to verify recipient details before completing transactions. The update is a significant milestone in Safaricom’s efforts to improve transaction accuracy and reduce the operational burden of processing erroneous transfers.
Erroneous transactions are a pain point for M-PESA customers and a costly drain on Safaricom’s resources. Before Hakikisha’s rollout, the telco spent considerable time investigating and reversing payments sent to the wrong recipients. Initially launched in 2015, the feature was designed to curb these errors by displaying the recipient’s name before payment confirmation. However, early versions required users to dial a number within 15 seconds to cancel a transaction, a cumbersome process that led to unintended transfers rather than preventing them.
“The call to action was not very clear. Customers had to dial ‘1’ to stop a transaction, and many didn’t know what to do,” said Anita Kaunga, Product Manager for M-PESA Consumer Payments. “We realized the feature wasn’t working as intended.”
To fix this, Safaricom redesigned Hakikisha, replacing the previous opt-out system with a simple Yes or No pop-up message that requires confirmation before a transaction proceeds. The improved version has significantly reduced mistaken transfers, cutting reversal requests by two-thirds.
The impact extends beyond M-PESA. Nearly all Kenyan banks and rival mobile money services, including Airtel Money, have adopted similar verification features to prevent misdirected payments. Banking apps now retrieve recipient details before transactions are finalised, a crucial improvement for banks where reversals can take a week or longer.
However, the update has also raised privacy concerns. Some users exploit Hakikisha to verify personal details such as names without completing transactions. In response, M-PESA has capped such verification attempts at five per day, disabling Hakikisha for users who exceed this limit.
M-PESA, which turns 18 on March 25, remains a dominant force in Kenya’s financial ecosystem. The service had 34 million subscribers as of November 2024 and continues to be a top revenue driver for Safaricom, recording a 16.6% year-on-year growth to KES 77.22 billion ($597 million) in the half-year ending September 2024. With fewer transaction errors and a more seamless user experience, M-PESA is reinforcing its role as Kenya’s go-to digital payment platform.
