Giant Telco Safaricom Plc has suspended a number of its MPESA agents for what the firm terms as fraudulent activities on their MPESA Accounts.
“Dear Agents, Kindly note, lines that have committed fraud have been suspended by Safcom today. If your line gives you an error message “inactive state” just know you are one of the affected”, a Whatsapp message seen by Kenyanbusinessfeed.com says in part.
The suspension is occasioned by ‘Sub Agents breaking down deposits to earn more commission and also performing Fraudulent deposits to increase commissions”, an email from James Mutisya, head of market development department.
The suspension will last for six months and ‘fraudulent’ earnings recouped back, Safaricom says.
READ: Safaricom accused of IP theft in their latest innovation
Safaricom has asked its head office staff to be vigilant on MPESA agent’s transactions.
“We urge all Head offices to be vigilant and make use of the M-pesa web system to check the transactions that our sub agents perform and report any anomaly”
The firm has also asked its affected agents to visit the Headquarters in case of complaints.
“The commission earned fraudulently on the suspended tills will also be clawed back by EOD tomorrow. Any amount of float inside is also stuck in there.
If affected, pls visit Safaricom Headquarters HQ1-Fraud Dept (in Westlands Nbi) for further questioning/information and/or even possible prosecution. Kindly carry all your KYC documents”, Admin of the group wrote.
Safaricom ties the fraudulent activities to the free-MPESA transactions for amounts up to SH1000 that was brought about as a means to curb the spread of COVID-19
Kenyan Business Feed is the top Kenyan Business Blog. We share news from Kenya and across the region. To contact us with any alert, please email us to [email protected]