Kenya’s Safaricom has admitted that improvements to its M-Pesa service have been delayed.
The M-Pesa payments system, first launched in 2007, allows users to make transfers, deposits and take out small loans via their mobile phones. The service has proved extremely popular and the platform now struggles to support its many users, causing occasional shutdowns.
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A new, faster platform was due to be finished next August, but CEO Bob Collymore announced on 5 November that it will now not be completed until some time during 2015.
The improved platform is being built by Chinese firm Huawei and is expected to be able to process 600 transactions a second, rather than the 250 the system can currently process.
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