It is slightly over a year since KCB and Safaricom introduced the KCB MPESA Account. After that one year, Safaricom has rolled out a major MPESA Menu update to incorporate the KCB MPESA Account into the MPESA Menu. From when KCB MPESA Account was launched until early this morning (at least as far as my MPESA Menu is concerned), the only way one could access the KCB MPESA Account was through dialing the USSD code *844#, which meant that Mshwari had a special privilege over the KCB MPESA Account from Safaricom’s point of view.
A year later, Safaricom seems to have considered to treat KCB MPESA Account just as equally important as Mshwari, and as such as reworked the MPESA Menu to allow KCB MPESA Account to ride within MPESA accessible through the Safaricom SIM Toolkit. To communicate the changes, Safaricom sent a text message to MPESA customers saying, “Your M-PESA menu has been updated, M-Shwari and KCB M-PESA Accounts are now accessible under the Loans and Savings menu. Thank you. Safaricom.” The old MPESA menu had the following Menu items:
- Send Money
- Withdraw Cash
- Buy Airtime
- M-Shwari
- Lipa na MPESA
- My Account
After the update, the MPESA menu now has the following items:
- Send Money
- Withdraw Cash
- Buy Airtime
- Loans and Savings
- Lipa na MPESA
- My Account
Under the Loans and Savings Account, we now have both Mshwari and KCB MPESA listed. Going deeper, one notices that there are remarkable differences between Mshwari and the KCB MPESA sub menu items. Mshwari sub menu items are given as:
- Send to M-Shwari
- Withdraw from M-Shwari
- Lock Savings Account
- Loan
- Check Balance
- Mini Statement
Whereas the KCB MPESA sub menu items are given as:
- Deposit from M-PESA
- Withdraw to M-PESA
- Loan
- Fixed Savings Accounts
- My Account
In the KCB MPESA, Check Balance and Mini Statement sub menu items are hidden under My Account. An immediate advantage that comes with the update of the MPESA menu to incorporate KCB MPESA Account is the ability for KCB MPESA Account customers to now use MPESA PIN to access the KCB MPESA Account services. This simplifies the use of KCB MPESA Account for many customers since initially a KCB MPESA customer had to create a unique PIN in order to access the KCB MPESA services via the USSD *844# services.
After the MPESA Menu update, I have tried several times to check whether the USSD code *844# is still working, but all I have received are messages saying that the service is currently unavailable and that the USSD code is invalid. This could imply that the USSD code services has been discontinued.
