Kenyan remote workers who rely on PayPal to receive payments from international clients are facing a tough time after the service that allows them to withdraw money to their MPesa mobile wallets was disrupted on Friday night.
The service, which is provided by Thunes Payments, a global cross-border payments network, went under maintenance on Friday and has not been restored since then. The outage has left many Kenyan freelancers, online sellers, and digital nomads stranded and unable to access their funds.
Users trying to access the website have been greeted by this message,
Under maintenance
The website is under maintenance in order to serve you better. Please visit this website again in a few minutes.
The PayPal Team
According to Safaricom, the mobile network operator that runs MPesa, the issue is on the PayPal side and they have been working with Thunes Payments to get it resolved as soon as possible. However, they have not given a timeline for when the service will be back to normal.
“Paypal is undertaking maintenance and they have assured us they are doing everything possible to bring the services back to normalcy soonest. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience,” Safaricom said in reply to a concern by one of the service users.
Hi, Drew. There is an maintenance error on the website, which our team is following up on for assistance. Sorry for the inconvenience. ^NW
— Safaricom Care (@Safaricom_Care) June 12, 2023
PayPal and Thunes Payments have not issued any official statement on the matter, but have been responding to individual complaints from users on social media. They have asked users to send their details via direct messages for further assistance, but many users have reported that their issues have not been resolved.
“I have been trying to withdraw my money from PayPal to MPesa since Friday night but I keep getting an error message that the service is under maintenance. I have contacted PayPal, Thunes Payments, and Safaricom but none of them has given me a satisfactory answer. I need my money urgently to pay my bills and buy food. This is very frustrating and unfair,” a freelance writer based in Nairobi told The Netick.
Some users who have linked their PayPal accounts to their Equity Bank accounts have been able to withdraw their money, but they have to wait for at least 24 hours or more for the transaction to be processed. This is still inconvenient for those who need instant access to their funds.
This is not the first time that the PayPal to MPesa service has experienced technical glitches, but this is the longest outage that users have faced since the service was launched.
The service outage comes at a time when more Kenyans are turning to online work as a source of income.