If you’re a Safaricom buyer, chances are high you will have two Safaricom apps sitting in your cellphone proper now. One is the MySafaricom App, and the opposite is the M-PESA App. You most likely know the routine: open M-PESA to ship cash or test your assertion, then swap to MySafaricom to purchase information bundles or handle your Residence Fibre. It’s a small inconvenience, however while you do it a number of occasions a day, it begins to really feel like quite a bit. Safaricom apparently seen too.
A Fast Background on the Two Apps
MySafaricom launched in 2016, marketed because the all-purpose self-care app for anybody with a Safaricom line. It dealt with the on a regular basis stuff: airtime top-ups, information bundles, account balances, invoice funds, Residence Fibre administration, and a cleaner view of your M-PESA exercise. It was primarily the app you went to while you needed to handle your Safaricom relationship.
5 years later, in 2021, Safaricom launched the M-PESA App, which the corporate described as a monetary instrument for funds, financial savings, loans, and world transactions. It went deeper on the cash facet, bringing in companies like Fuliza, M-PESA World, Pochi la Biashara, and funding merchandise. MySafaricom had M-PESA options too, however solely in a lighter, stripped-down type. So each apps existed, overlapped in locations, and but every had its personal lane. Customers discovered to stay with the break up. Till now.
Enter My OneApp
At day two of the Safaricom Decode 4.0 occasion, the corporate formally pulled again the curtain on My OneApp, a unified expertise that merges the M-PESA App and the MySafaricom App right into a single platform. The announcement was made by Safaricom’s Tremendous App staff and backed by a stay demo that confirmed what the mixed expertise truly appears to be like like in observe.
The 2 apps presently serve 6.7 million and a pair of.8 million customers respectively, so this isn’t a small product determination. It impacts a major chunk of Safaricom’s energetic digital buyer base.
So What Drawback Is It Truly Fixing?
The trustworthy reply is: fragmentation. In line with Safaricom, the largest friction level for customers at present shouldn’t be an absence of options however fragmentation. Prospects find yourself switching between the M-PESA app and the MySafaricom app to test balances, purchase bundles, pay payments, and handle monetary companies. Safaricom’s personal phrases summed it up merely: “We love the apps, we love the options, however we don’t love the swap.”
My OneApp is the reply to that swap. For the primary time, clients will be capable to see their M-PESA steadiness, GSM steadiness, payments, bundles, and monetary companies in a single place, with out having to bounce between two apps with two totally different interfaces and two totally different login experiences.
However Safaricom is pitching this as greater than a merger of screens. My OneApp is designed to study consumer behaviour over time, adapting based mostly on transaction frequency, most well-liked contacts, recurring funds, and generally used companies. Ceaselessly accessed options equivalent to investments, lending, or invoice funds routinely floor on the house display screen. The thought is that the app will get smarter the extra you utilize it, and your most typical actions are all the time proper in entrance of you with none digging.
Safaricom can also be pushing consumer management and self-service, decreasing reliance on USSD and buyer care. Customers will be capable to resolve points like PIN resets or community complaints straight inside the app fairly than dialing a shortcode or queuing at a service centre.
There may be additionally an even bigger image play right here. At its core, My OneApp depends on a mini-app layer. As a substitute of downloading a dozen totally different apps for native companies, companies and builders can embed their choices straight into Safaricom’s ecosystem. Which means the app isn’t just a consolidation of two current merchandise. It’s designed to develop right into a platform the place a variety of companies from third events stay alongside Safaricom’s personal.
The Actual Questions Customers Are Asking
In fact, a merger of this scale doesn’t come with out reputable considerations from customers, and it might be dishonest to disregard them.
One honest fear is reliability. Each apps have had their moments of happening, and plenty of customers have trusted the truth that when one fails, the opposite nonetheless works. Merging every part right into a single app removes that backup. If My OneApp goes down, there isn’t any fallback app. This locations monumental strain on Safaricom’s engineering and uptime commitments. The FinTech 2.0 infrastructure they’ve been constructing will must be genuinely resilient, not simply on paper.
Then there’s the query of function parity. Each apps have had options that customers love particularly due to how they had been in-built that app. A merger ought to, in concept, protect one of the best of each. However in observe, product consolidations typically imply the richer expertise will get simplified to suit the unified design. Customers will probably be watching carefully.
There may be additionally the dual-SIM query. A very good variety of Kenyans carry two Safaricom numbers, and a few have assigned every quantity to a particular app for various functions, whether or not for enterprise and private separation or simply desire. How My OneApp handles a number of numbers on a single account or gadget is one thing that can want a transparent reply earlier than the broader rollout.
The place Issues Stand
My OneApp is presently obtainable in an Early Entry section on the Google Play Retailer for Android customers, with iOS assist anticipated to comply with. Safaricom is accumulating suggestions from early testers earlier than a wider public rollout, which suggests there’s nonetheless a window for the product to be formed by actual consumer enter.
The ambition behind My OneApp is obvious and the core downside it’s fixing is actual. Whether or not the execution lives as much as that ambition is the half that can play out within the coming months. For now, it is without doubt one of the extra important product strikes Safaricom has made in years, and it’s price taking note of.
