If you’ve been on Kenyan social media long enough, you’ve probably heard at least one “hack” for clearing an M-Shwari loan without paying it.
Change your phone number.
Throw away the SIM card.
Wait for the line to be recycled.
Use a new ID.
These stories get passed around like insider secrets. And they all sound convincing until you look at how M-Shwari actually works. I saw a few of them during the recent M-Shwari outage, so let’s talk about it properly. Not the rumours. Not the “my cousin tried this” stories. The facts.
The biggest myth: changing your phone number makes the loan disappear
Let’s start with the most popular one.
No, switching SIM cards does not make your M-Shwari loan disappear.
That’s because M-Shwari loans are not managed at phone-number level. They are managed at ID level, the national ID or passport you used when registering.
Your phone number is just the door you use to access the service. The loan itself is tied to you. So even if you change your number today, the loan doesn’t go anywhere. It’s still attached to your identity.
“What if I register a new SIM?” Still the same story
This is where the myth usually evolves.
Some people believe that defaulting and then registering a new line gives them a clean slate. But in Kenya, SIM cards are also registered using an ID. So if someone defaults and later registers a new SIM under the same ID or adds another line, recovery can still happen through that new number or any accounts linked to that ID.
In short, you can change numbers, but you can’t change who the system knows you are.
The recycled SIM scare story (and why it’s mostly nonsense)
Now let’s flip the fear around.
There’s a common warning that if you buy a recycled SIM, you might “inherit” someone else’s unpaid M-Shwari loan. This one causes a lot of unnecessary anxiety, and it’s simply not true.
If you receive a recycled phone number, you do not take on the previous owner’s loan. Also, their default remains tied to their ID. Not the phone number, and certainly not you.
As long as your ID was not used to take the loan, you’re not responsible for it. Full stop.
“But what about CRB blacklisting?”
Same rule. Same answer.
CRB listings follow the ID, not the phone number. If someone defaults and gets listed, that listing doesn’t magically jump to the next person who uses the SIM.
Likewise, changing your phone number won’t clear your own CRB record either. Credit history sticks to identity, not the hardware.
The part people don’t like to talk about: the bank can recover money elsewhere
Here’s where the fantasy of disappearing loans really falls apart.
Under standard banking rules, M-Shwari (through NCBA Bank) has the Right of Lien. That means the bank may recover outstanding loans from any accounts held under the same ID.
So even if you stop using the original M-Shwari line, the obligation doesn’t vanish. If you hold funds elsewhere under your name, the bank can legally use those to offset the loan.
Again, notice the pattern: everything leads back to the ID.
Want to see how many lines are tied to your ID?
If you’ve had multiple SIM cards over the years or just want to be sure nothing strange is registered under your name, Safaricom lets you check.
Dial *106#. It shows all phone numbers linked to your ID. It’s a simple check, but a useful one in an era of digital lending and identity-based recovery.
So… how do you actually make an M-Shwari loan disappear?
This is the part no one wants to hear.
The only real way to make an M-Shwari loan disappear is to repay it. There’s no SIM trick. No recycled-number loophole. No quiet reset button. And no, there’s no hack to upgrade your M-Shwari limit.
Modern mobile lending in Kenya is built around identity, not phone numbers. Once you understand that, the myths stop sounding clever and start sounding outdated.
