Kenya's mobile money giant Safaricom will begin masking phone numbers in M-Pesa transaction SMS notifications starting March 24, following approval from the Central Bank of Kenya.
The privacy enhancement, which affects the country's most widely-used financial service, will display only partial phone numbers in transaction messages - a move that balances user privacy with fraud prevention, according to Safaricom.
"We're adapting to increased privacy expectations while maintaining security," a Safaricom spokesperson told Nation Africa.
The update marks the latest evolution for M-Pesa, which launched in Kenya seventeen years ago and has since transformed how East Africans handle money. The service now processes more than $300 billion in transactions annually across the region.
Dr. Bitange Ndemo, a former Permanent Secretary in Kenya's Ministry of Information and Communication, says the move reflects M-Pesa's maturation. "When M-Pesa started, we were solving basic access to banking. Now we're solving second-generation problems like privacy and data protection."
The partial masking will show only the first and last digits of phone numbers involved in transactions, with middle digits replaced by asterisks. Users will still receive full transaction details including amounts, balances, and unique transaction codes.
But some Kenyan consumer advocates worry the change could complicate fraud detection. "Many Kenyans screenshot their M-Pesa messages as proof of payment," says Wanjiru Gikonyo, director of the Consumer Federation of Kenya. "Partial numbers might make it harder to verify transactions when disputes arise."
Safaricom says it consulted with the Central Bank to ensure the privacy feature wouldn't undermine fraud prevention systems. The telco maintains full transaction records on its servers, accessible to users through the M-Pesa app.
The change comes as African fintech services face growing scrutiny over data handling. Nigeria, Ghana, and have all introduced stricter data protection regulations in recent years, forcing mobile money providers to rethink how they display user information.
