M-Pesa Africa on Wednesday launched a Shared Service Operations Centre (SSOC) in Nairobi to oversee service operations and technical support.

This will include incident monitoring and resolution, managing platform changes and upgrades, deployment of new features and capacity management, and coordination with technical vendors.

“For 16 years, M-Pesa has been at the core of our purpose to transform lives by using technology to connect customers to different opportunities. The M-Pesa Africa Shared Service Operations Centre builds on our purpose by enabling us to deliver a higher service quality and increased platform reliability as we expand to more markets and add more products to the platform,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO – Safaricom.

The M-Pesa SSOC will support M-Pesa operations in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Lesotho, Ghana as well as future markets the service expands to. M-Pesa platform operations in the five markets were previously being handled across several points in Africa and Europe and the SSOC brings the entire platform in-house to a single point in Kenya for the first time.

“Financial services remain a priority for us as we drive financial and digital inclusion on the continent. The launch of this Operations Centre is an important milestone and testament to our commitment to continue delivering innovative and cost-effective personal finance and business solutions that were previously difficult and cumbersome to acquire – further supporting us in connecting the next 100 million African customers,” said Shameel Joosub, CEO – Vodacom Group.

M-Pesa Africa has invested more than $2 million into the SSOC and is part of the company’s transition to a digital cloud-based platform. The new M-Pesa platform is designed to be scalable and offer the entire range of products and services across all markets, support integration of new products and services as well as leveraging emerging technologies in areas such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.

“We are delighted to launch the M-Pesa Africa Shared Service Operations Centre which empowers us to provide 24/7 monitoring and support to operations and services across different markets. The Shared Service Operations Centre strengthens our position as Africa’s largest fintech and digital ecosystem, bringing us closer to our vision of one M-Pesa, providing one platform and unified operations across all our markets. It will enable us to deliver increased reliability, a more robust platform, faster upgrade and change management as we transition to a fully digital ecosystem connecting customers and businesses across the continent,” said Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, MD – M-Pesa Africa.

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