How MySafaricom App Gives You Control Over The Phone Service

For a long time, using M-Pesa on your phone was not a pleasant experience. If you had a feature phone, you had to access the M-Pesa menu, then navigate it using a USSD menu. Some smartphone users (especially iPhones) had to dig deep into their phones, to even find this SIM Toolkit menu. As if that was not hard enough, you then had to be careful not to send money to the wrong person – the tech-savvy ones among us would copy the numbers from the phone book and paste them onto the M-Pesa menu, while most people copied the phone number on a piece of paper, and manually transferred it into the menu. I am using many words to say that the user experience was not great.

This is why I was relieved when Safaricom launched the MySafaricom app. The app has many great features that I will highlight below, but for me, improving the M-Pesa experience has been the biggest win. The app has a number of advantages for the user:

You are able to pick the phone number of the recipient straight from your phonebook. This reduces the probability of sending money to the wrong person.
Secondly, the Hakikisha service checks that number against the Safaricom database, giving you the second opportunity to confirm that it is indeed the correct recipient.
The app allows you to calculate the cost of the transaction upfront – both the deposit and withdrawal fees. As one who is a conscious spender, this is of great value

Overall, the MySafaricom app has resulted in a much better interaction with Safaricom services including:

Seamlessly buying airtime and bundles and paying via M-Pesa
Ability to review your M-Pesa transactions – no need to wait until the end of the month for the transaction statement, or to scroll through endless texts trying to locate a payment
Tracking data usage – to do this, allow MySafaricom App to track data usage.

The App is available on the App Store.