Millions of Kenyans and foreigners have been left stranded after the government’s platform used to make payments for government services experienced a technical hitch on Friday.

Kenya Revenue Authority, in a statement on its social media pages, acknowledged the outage of the eCitizen payment services but failed to disclose the cause of the glitch.

“We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with eCitizen Payment Services,” stated KRA.

The authority has advised those seeking to make payments for key government services to instead utilize the options availed by banks or use the Process Data Quickly (PDQ) machines.

“To ensure your payments are processed without delay, please use your bank payment options or PDQs,” it advised.

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The outage affected a myriad of significant services with hundreds of tourists forced to cancel their trips at the Nairobi National Park in Nairobi and other parks across the country.

In a statement later at 3pm on Friday, the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services announced normal services had resumed on the online payment platform.

The Department domiciled in the Ministry of Interior revealed that the hitch had been occasioned by network issues without revealing anything further on the said outage.

“The hitch was occasioned by an internal network occurrence that affected our operating system,” said the department in its statement. 

It added: “Our technical teams have since successfully resolved the problem and restored normal operations.” 

 “We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused,” apologized KRA.



In July 2023, the platform faced a similar glitch which the then ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo blamed on hackers trying to jam the system through an overload of data requests.

The President William Ruto administration boasts that more than 16,000 Government services are available on eCitizen from more than 100 ministries, counties, departments and agencies with their payments processed through the platform.