Safaricom has finally addressed rumours surrounding the Tuesday M-Pesa mobile service disruption that left many Kenyans who rely on the platform for their daily transactions stranded for about one and a half hours.

During an interview with Swala Nyeti on Friday, Safaricom Chief Financial Services Officer Esther Waititu dismissed speculations that the Tuesday service disruption was to integrate M-Pesa with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) system.

Waititu categorically stated that there was no integration of the two platforms that materialised on that day.

"Let me be clear that there was no integration. KRA themselves if you follow them...they also publicly spoke that there was no integration happening between M-Pesa and KRA,"  Waititu stated.

"KRA is a separate business entity and Safaricom, and M-Pesa specifically are separate business entities and when you're separate business entities, sharing of data is not permissible."

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While assuring their customers of their data safety, Waititu added that they are governed under the Data Protection Act, therefore they cannot share their customers' data.

"The assurance I want to give our customers is your data remains in Safaricom, your data remains only with M-Pesa.

"If KRA are looking to seek more information from our customers. They will contact them and engage them in the directory as KRA  but KRA will not engage us to engage our customers."

"Those are separate business models and separate business entities. So, there was no integration that was happening at that time," Waiititu added.

Safaricom's clarification on the matter has served to restore their customers' faith in the platform and also cleared the air on the accusation about the alleged integration with KRA.