Tigo Pesa to be closed temporarily

Dar es Salaam. Tigo Tanzania plans to temporarily shut down its Tigo Pesa money transfer service in the coming weekend for 17 hours.

The aim of doing so is to test the upgraded system of the service.

A statement by the telecom company in Dar es Salaam has noted that the Tigo Pesa switch-off on Saturday night through Sunday afternoon would be a culmination of a seven days of upgrading the mobile financial service platform “to make Tigo Pesa experience and performance much faster, stable and much flexible.”

Services that will be affected during the maintenance period include PIN changing and registration of new subscribers that will be unavailable from September 8 to 15; Sim swap from September 12 to 14; and Sim modification that will be unavailable from September 6 to 16.

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused while we strive to make your Tigo Pesa experience and performance much faster, stable and more flexible,” said the statement. A similar announcement has also been published by the telecom across the local dailies and on social media.

Tigo Pesa is the most popular mobile financial service with over 4 million customers across Tanzania. Services offered by Tigo Pesa include cash transfers among Tigo subscribers and to customers of across other mobile networks, mobile to bank and bank to mobile cash transfer.

Last year Tigo Pesa became the first mobile financial service in the world to pioneer cross-border money transfer to Rwanda with currency conversion and also the first to pay a quarterly profit share to its subscribers from saving held in trust.