Safaricom’s M-PESA platform is undergoing a major upgrade to handle unprecedented transaction volumes – planning to double its current peak capacity from 4,000 transactions per second (TPS) to 8,000 TPS by the end of 2026, with an interim milestone of 6,000 TPS set for April 2026.
In an interview with Kenyan WallStreet, Safaricom provided a detailed breakdown of its tech stack and how M-PESA operations run.
To put this in perspective:
In 2015, when M-PESA ran on its localized infrastructure, it could handle just 616 TPS.
Today, with its cloud-native, active-active architecture, it supports:
4,000 TPS at peak
Roughly 240,000 transactions per minute
Approximately 14.4 million per hour
Around 345.6 million per day
About 10.5 billion per month
An estimated 125.8 billion annually (assuming 364 days)
This evolution represents a strategic, demand-forecast-driven upgrade – not just reactive scaling – ensuring robust performance even during off-peak times, such as 300 TPS at 1 AM on weekends.
Kenyan Leading Mobile Money Service, M-PESA, Marks 18-Year Anniversary, Now Supporting Over One Million Businesses With Over 55,000 API Integrations
With a transaction capacity of 4,000 per second, the platform processes over 100 million transactions daily, making it… pic.twitter.com/FxEjSY7QyV
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) March 12, 2025
On the infrastructure side, M-PESA now leverages over 700 servers distributed across three environments – one for production and two designed for disaster recovery. This structure enables seamless traffic failover within under four minutes. Its database system has transitioned from 16-core to 64-core, incorporating sharding for enhanced performance and reliability. Plus, the platform supports 45,000 integrations, engages 100,000 developers, and interfaces with more than ten internal systems, including services like Zidisha and Fuliza.
Safaricom conducts nearly two system upgrades every month without sacrificing uptime – critical in a system where even one minute of downtime could impact 240,000 customer requests.
Blockchain vs. M-PESA’s Architecture: Key Differences & Similarities
1.) Centralization
M-PESA is a centrally operated system maintained by Safaricom. Transaction validation, ledger updates, and system control are managed through central servers and controlled infrastructure.
Blockchain is a decentralized network, where multiple nodes validate and record transactions. There’s no single point of control or failure.
2.) Throughput & Scalability
M-PESA has scaled from hundreds to thousands of TPS using cloud-native, sharded infrastructure – showcasing impressive horizontal scalability.
Blockchains, especially public ones like Bitcoin or Ethereum, often face speed limitations due to consensus mechanisms, usually handling 10s to 100s of TPS. Advanced blockchains (like some permissioned or layer-2 networks) can achieve higher throughput, but not on the scale of M-PESA’s real-time demands.
3.) Immutability & Trust
M-PESA relies on vertical trust – the system is trusted because it’s operated by a known, regulated entity (Safaricom), with robust backend ledger and infrastructure.
Blockchain emphasizes immutable ledgers and consensus-based trust. Once a transaction is validated and added, it’s extremely difficult to alter, which is particularly valuable in trustless, multi-party scenarios.
4.) Fault Tolerance & Resilience
M-PESA achieves resilience through geo-redundancy: three environments, fast failovers, and quick traffic rerouting within minutes protect against outages.
Blockchains inherently resist faults – no single node failure can stop the system. However, they can be vulnerable to network partitioning or consensus attacks (like 51% attacks) if not sufficiently decentralized and secured.
5.) Security & Privacy
M-PESA secures data through controlled environments, internal safeguards, and regulated access – providing privacy suited to retail financial services.
Blockchain offers transparency and pseudonymity: transactions can be publicly visible, which may raise privacy concerns unless using privacy-enhanced blockchain variants or permissioned networks.
6.) Upgrade Frequency & Flexibility
M-PESA demonstrates rapid agility – rolling out upgrades almost twice a month while preserving high availability.
Blockchain upgrades often require consensus among network participants (hard or soft forks), making implementation slower and more complex, especially in public networks.
Summary Table: M-PESA vs. Blockchain
Feature M-PESA (Centralized Mobile Money) Blockchain (Decentralized Ledger) Control Central (Safaricom) Distributed (many nodes) TPS & Scalability Thousands of TPS (4k → 8k planned) Generally low (10s–100s), but layer-2s can scale Trust Model Regulated central trust Trust via consensus, no central authority Fault Tolerance Active-active, failover systems Natural resilience across nodes Privacy Controlled, private Public by default, pseudonymous Upgrades Frequent and seamless Slow, requires network consensus Immutability Mutable by central admin Immutable once confirmed by consensus
M-PESA exemplifies a massively scalable, highly available, centrally managed digital money system – delivering 125 billion+ annual transactions with enterprise-grade uptime and resilience. The system’s architecture, built for speed and reliability, is markedly different from blockchain’s decentralized, transparent ledger model.
For scenarios demanding real-time retail transactions under a trusted operator – like M-PESA – centralized systems offer superior performance, flexibility, and user experience. On the other hand, blockchain brings strengths for environments where decentralization, immutability, and trustless validation are essential.
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