Safaricom delays plan on hiding full details of Lipa Na M-Pesa customers, cites technical hitch

In the plan, which was set to kick off at the end of June, only the first name and a few digits of the customer's phone numbers shall be displayed while making payments, in a bid to curb the trading of personal information to fraudsters.

The plan was in accordance with the Data Protection law enacted in 2019 to protect user privacy, a model used by banks when sending account numbers.

However, Safaricom has announced that the launch shall be stalled after they identified technical hitches which crippled the rollout plan.

"As an update to our previous communication regarding data minimization on the M-Pesa API, we will be making adjustments to accommodate several of our partners who are experiencing technical challenges integrating the minimized APIs," Safaricom said as quoted by Business Daily. 

API (Application Programming Interface) programming is a software that allows communication/service between two applications. It defines how the two communicate with each other using requests and responses.

"As such, partners will continue to receive customer phone numbers through M-Pesa API beyond the earlier communicated deadline of 30th June as said," added Safaricom saying the revised launch date will be announced in due time.

Customers/subscribers using the Lipa Na M-Pesa platform leave their numbers and names to the respective merchants owning the till numbers.

This has posed a high-security risk as merchants are said to use the numbers to send unsolicited advertising through text messages or even sold to third parties.

The move comes amid revelations that more than a fifth of Kenyan companies shared customers’ financial and personal information without consent.

According to a survey by consultancy Ernst & Young (EY), 41 per cent of firms transferred client data to third-party service providers while more than 53 per cent of these companies or 21.7 per cent of firms did not seek the approval of their customers