M-Pesa Is Hiding Your Phone Number Starting Next Week – Here’s What Changes
Safaricom is rolling out a significant privacy upgrade to M-Pesa on March 24, 2026, one that will change how your personal details appear every time you send money. The Central Bank of Kenya has already approved the new data minimization feature, and it is set to reshape the way millions of Kenyans experience mobile payments.
At its core, the update masks portions of a sender’s phone number across Till, PayBill, and peer-to-peer transactions. From March 24, merchants and recipients will no longer see a sender’s full contact details in payment notifications – a move Safaricom frames as a direct strike against fraud and digital privacy violations.
What the New Feature Actually Does
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa broke down exactly how the masking works. The system will display only two names of the sender and hide the three middle digits of the phone number – so a number like 0722000712 would appear as 0722***712, for example.
“We have an obligation to ensure maximum digital security for our customers. This feature is a major step in the right direction towards fighting against fraud,” Ndegwa said.
For situations where a recipient genuinely needs a sender’s full details, the system builds in a structured process. The recipient has a 24-hour window to submit a request. Once they do, the sender receives a prompt and can either approve or decline. If the sender does not respond within two hours, the request automatically expires – keeping the data locked down by default.
Privacy Has Been Years in the Making
Safaricom says its push toward data minimization did not start recently. Ndegwa traced the company’s privacy journey back to 2020, when the launch of Pochi la Biashara first limited the personal information merchants could see during transactions. A year later, Safaricom tightened its internal controls, restricting how much customer data front-line and support staff could access.
By 2022, the telco had begun masking phone numbers on M-Pesa statements, extending privacy protections across all customer-facing touchpoints. The company took another leap in 2024, as Chief Financial Services Officer Esther Waititu explained.
“In 2024, we implemented API-level data minimization, ensuring partners only receive the minimum data required to complete a service,” Waititu said.
The March 24 update builds directly on that foundation. Waititu confirmed that from that date, recipients across all M-Pesa payment channels will see only two names and a partially masked number.
“This journey reflects our ongoing commitment to embedding privacy-by-design across our financial ecosystem,” she said.
Why This Matters for M-Pesa’s Millions of Users
As mobile money use continues to surge across Kenya, the pressure on platforms like M-Pesa to handle personal data responsibly has grown in step. Ndegwa acknowledged that users are demanding more than just seamless transactions.
“Our customers want convenience, but they also need to feel that the information entrusted to us is handled with care, respect, and integrity,” he said.
The March 24 rollout puts that commitment into practice in the most visible way yet – right at the point of every transaction. For everyday users, the change is simple: your phone number stays yours. For fraudsters who have exploited exposed contact details to target M-Pesa users, the window just got a lot smaller.
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