For years, there’s been a little-known convenience in Safaricom’s app ecosystem. Once you set up the M-PESA app or MySafaricom app on your phone while the SIM card was inserted, you could remove that SIM card entirely and still transact freely.
You could even use a completely different SIM (or no SIM at all) on that phone, and as long as you had internet access, both apps would happily serve you. That meant one less reason to swap SIMs between devices, perfect for those of us who juggle multiple phones, test review units, or simply don’t want to keep prying open SIM trays.
Well… it looks like the party might be over.
How I Found Out
Like any gadget reviewer worth their salt, I regularly hop between devices. Recently, I pulled my SIM card from my daily driver and slotted it into a review unit. The plan? Keep the M-PESA and MySafaricom apps running on the original phone without a SIM, just like I’d always done.
In the past, this setup worked flawlessly. I’d access my balance, send money, and pay bills from the SIM-less phone while the SIM itself lived elsewhere. But this time, things got weird.
On the M-PESA app, I entered my PIN as usual. It even loaded my dashboard, complete with my balance and Fuliza limit. But almost instantly, a pop-up appeared asking to “Insert your SIM card to continue.” And back to the PIN entry screen I went. Every. Single. Time.
The MySafaricom app didn’t even try to be polite. On launch, it hit me with a blunt error: “No SIM card detected. Check your SIM card and try again.”
If this is indeed a new policy, it changes the game for anyone who relied on these apps without having the SIM card in the device. Frequent travelers, multi-device users, and those with dedicated “M-PESA phones” will have to rethink their setups. It’s also worth noting there’s been no official communication from Safaricom about such a change. Whether this is an intentional security upgrade, a quiet policy shift, or just a temporary glitch remains to be seen.
We’ve seen Safaricom make significant app updates in the past. But this possible move away from SIM-less access is a first. If intentional, it could be a security measure to prevent unauthorized access on devices no longer tied to the registered SIM. On the other hand, it could simply be a bug introduced in recent updates.
Has this happened to you? Can you still use M-PESA or MySafaricom apps on a phone without the SIM card they were registered with? Drop your experiences in the comments.
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