Safaricom says it will finally launch its new M-Pesa Junior product later in November through a mobile line that will allow minors aged between 10 – 18 to save money on the M-Pesa platform.

According to Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa, to access the service, the under 18 subscribers will only be allowed to be registered under the SIM cards of their parents or guardians.

Ndegwa clarified that the minors’ activities will be restricted in the M-Pesa Junior product.

”So, going forward, the junior will be able to have their own number but under the parent account, which converts to the junior automatically when they turn 18 rather than having that problematic element that used to happened before,” said Ndegwa during the release of Safaricom’s Half-Year results ending September 30, 2022 on Friday.

Ndegwa added that features such as betting will be disabled from the service to protect the minors with parents able to monitor what they are doing.

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“The parent should be able to monitor what the child is able to do. We have simplified the menu that the junior account will have so that they are not able to access certain services like betting,” the Safaricom CEO added.


Ndegwa said the regulator, Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) had already given the new Safaricom product a nod.

“So, that has received a very strong support from the regulator because it is about parental control of what juniors do rather than using an adult account,” he noted.

The Safaricom CEO added that the telcos had also upgraded its M-Pesa platform to allow more and smoother transactions per second.

"Recently, we upgraded M-Pesa capacity to 2,600 transactions per second without causing any service impact on customers," he said.