Safaricom has introduced an approval feature for MPesa cash reversals whereby a trial at cancelling a transaction is followed by an automated call from Safaricom.
The new feature allows payment senders to approve or decline the reversal action as the cash is held by the service provider.
This follows an outcry from businesses including customers who have been hit by the rampant reversals as the fraudulent cancellation of transactions before finalization saw a rise in losses.
In a statement, Safaricom said that within a few seconds, users will be notified that the transaction reversal has been started.
“An update will be shared within two hours. Safaricom will at this point begin engaging the second party, for the reversal.”
Upon approval is when the funds can be released back to the sender while in case a reversal is rejected, both the sender and receiver are to prove their cases.
This feature is an improvement to curb the cries and losses from particularly traders who receive payments through MPesa only for their clients to reverse the transactions resulting in lost cash.
As well as the public transport sector where the payments are done by mpesa only for the passengers to reverse transactions leaving the loss to the crews of public transport.
The minimal intervention was barely considering both parties in a transaction as one could reverse by simply sending an MPesa SMS to 456.
After sending the message one would then receive a response from ‘Reversal’ reporting the beginning of a reverse transaction and stating an update would be shared in the two hours.
Well with the new feature, there is an option to call the customer service team on a toll number 100 to reverse erroneous cash transactions.
It’s through this option that one is required to dial 100, and select an option to speak to a Safaricom customer care agent who verifies details such as identity and phone numbers that the money would have been sent to mistakenly.
Upon verification, the reversal is to be initiated when one can receive their money back within 72 hours.
