Safaricom confirms major M-Shwari outage
Safaricom has confirmed a major glitch affecting its M-Shwari services, leaving thousands of customers stranded for more than 12 hours and triggering a wave of frustration online.
In responses to users on X in the early hours of Wednesday, November 19, 2025, the telco acknowledged the outage and assured customers that its technical teams, together with partner NCBA, were working to fix the problem.
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“Hello. M-Shwari services are currently unavailable due to an outage. Our partner NCBA is working closely with us to resolve the issue and restore services as soon as possible. We sincerely apologise for any inconveniences caused and appreciate your patience,” Safaricom stated.
The confirmation came after hours of growing anger from customers who were unable to access their money.
“Now you people are taking us for granted. It’s time to withdraw everything in your Mshwari bla bla and forget about it,” one frustrated client wrote.
“Hello @staywks, sorry for the inconvenience. We are currently experiencing a technical challenge with M-Shwari services and are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Our sincere apologies for any disruption caused,” Safaricom responded.
Another customer complained about being stranded at a supermarket counter because their M-Shwari account was inaccessible.
“Please, please! Notify your customers before your systems go for maintenance. Now I am stuck in a supermarket at the counter because of your inconvenience with M-Shwari. Work on this ASAP, I have bills to pay like rn,” the user said.
Similar glitch
This is not the first time customers have experienced prolonged disruption with the service. A similar outage hit the platform on Friday, October 31, 2025, when Safaricom customers remained unable to access M-Shwari services even after the telco announced that normal operations had been restored.
By Friday night, angry users were still flooding social media with complaints that deposits and withdrawals were not reflecting and account balances had not updated.
“Hey Safaricom, I deposited money into my M-Shwari account yesterday and it’s still not showing up,” one user posted. Another wrote, “You said the problem was fixed in the morning, but I still can’t access my funds. What’s happening?”
“What’s happening with M-Shwari, nitalala njaa jamani,” another lamented.
Safaricom’s customer care team later admitted that the October issue had not been fully resolved at the time and that technical teams were still working behind the scenes.
“Hey, we most sincerely apologise for the experience. We have noted the issue affecting the M-Shwari service. Please bear with us as we work to restore normalcy in the shortest time possible,” Safaricom told one user.
Adding;
“We don’t have a definite time frame; however, we will share an update once the issue is resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
