After more than a year in development, Safaricom is flipping the switch on a completely new cloud-native architecture for its dominant mobile money service.
Safaricom is taking its entire M-PESA platform offline this coming Monday, and new details reveal this is more than just routine maintenance. The three-hour downtime, scheduled from 0:30 AM to 3:30 AM on September 22nd, marks the final cutover from its long-standing “G3” architecture to a completely new platform dubbed “Fintech 2.0,” a project that has been over a year in the making.
The migration is the culmination of a massive effort by a core team of 210 people, supported by over 90 onsite and 300+ offshore partner resources. The final cutover process will begin hours before the public-facing downtime, starting at 1800 Hrs (6:00 PM) with prechecks and final preparations of the fintech environment.
The Architecture of the Future
The shift to Fintech 2.0 is a fundamental re-imagining of M-PESA’s underlying technology, designed to address the limitations of the current system and introduce significant improvements across the board.
Key architectural changes include:
- Massive Scalability: The new full cloud-native architecture will support over 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) with “unlimited software capacity,” a huge leap from the current 5,000 TPS. The system is built with elastic, auto-scalable resources, allowing capacity to be allocated on demand.
- Extreme Reliability: Safaricom is targeting an ambitious 99.999% service availability. This is achieved through an “Active-Active” setup, auto-scaling platform nodes, cross-site dual data replication, and a resilient micro-service architecture where the application is grouped into units that can each handle over 1,000 TPS.
- Unprecedented Agility: The new platform is built to be “cloud-agnostic,” meaning it doesn’t depend on specific cloud provider capabilities, paving the way for a future multi-cloud strategy. Development cycles that previously took over three months will be drastically reduced. The system offers superior integration via RESTful APIs and even Low code/No code support, and upgrades will be rolled out via canary releases and a modern CI/CD pipeline.
- Intelligent Operations: The platform introduces advanced monitoring with AIOps, seamless online upgrades, and an “Intelligent Fault Abnormal Link Tracking Program” to proactively manage system health and minimize customer impact during issues like a database failure.
“Cutover Assurance”
Safaricom’s confidence in this monumental switch is backed by a comprehensive testing and assurance plan. The project has successfully passed every critical gate on its roadmap, including two full rounds of System Integration Tests (SIT), User Acceptance Tests (UAT), Performance tests, and Cyber Security scans.
Crucially, the team has completed two successful dress rehearsals and dry runs to simulate the final cutover. All regulatory and communication criteria were also met, including providing 14 days’ prior notice to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
Once the migration is complete at 3:30 AM, the work isn’t over. A “Post Go-live” phase will immediately begin, featuring intensive system hypercare and monitoring, as well as dedicated communication channels for customers and partners. This is part of a planned three-month, 7*24 “Hypercare” period with over 20+ onsite resources to ensure a smooth transition.
For a service that has defined Kenya’s digital economy for 18 years, this upgrade is a foundational shift. It’s the technical leap required to ensure M-PESA can innovate and scale for the next decade and beyond. For now, the message is clear: charge your phone and make your payments ahead of time. The brief, quiet hours of Monday morning will host one of the most significant evolutions in African fintech history.
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