By 
Safaricom has rolled out M-PESA Jumbe, a feature that sends customers a second, privacy-limited SMS after a payment so they can confirm a transaction to a cashier without revealing their M-PESA balance, full name or phone number. The same feature, officially called Split Notifications, lets business owners nominate staff to receive short payment alerts on their own phones, ending the habit of calling the owner or asking a customer to hand over their phone.
The service applies to Lipa na M-PESA merchants and Pochi la Biashara users. Safaricom published the feature's FAQ and merchant terms on 6 July 2026.
The problem Jumbe is meant to fix
At a petrol station, restaurant or small shop, payment confirmation has long followed a routine. A customer pays through a Till or PayBill, and the attendant, who cannot see the owner's M-PESA messages, asks to see the customer's confirmation SMS. That message carries the customer's M-PESA balance, so the customer exposes more financial information than the cashier needs.
The alternative has its own cost. When the owner is away, the attendant must phone the owner for confirmation, which delays the queue and interrupts the owner.
What happens when a customer pays
At a business that has switched the feature on, a payment now triggers separate messages depending on who is receiving them:
The customer gets the usual M-PESA SMS, balance included, followed by a Jumbe SMS built to be shown to other people.
The business owner continues to receive the standard, full M-PESA notification. Safaricom's Split Notifications FAQ show that the owner's main number is unaffected.
Nominated staff receive a short alert showing the amount, the transaction reference and the customer's alias.
The Jumbe receipt carries the transaction code, amount, business name, Till number, and the date and time of payment. It leaves out the customer's M-PESA balance, full name and phone number.
What a JumbeID is
In place of a name and number, the receipt shows a JumbeID. It combines the first letters of the customer's first and last names with the last two digits of their phone number. Safaricom's example is a customer named Nancy Kamau whose number ends in 74, who appears as NK_74.
The alias reduces exposure but does not make a customer anonymous. We noted that a shop with a handful of regular customers could still work out who a given alias belongs to, and that two customers can share the same JumbeID. In that case, the transaction code is what separates their payments.
Customers do not register, merchants decide
The feature is switched on by the business, not the shopper. Customers do not need to register or opt in, and that the Jumbe SMS arrives automatically after the normal M-PESA message if the business has enabled it. Only the main administrator of a business's M-PESA account can turn the feature on for a Till.
The consequence for customers is practical. If a payment produces no Jumbe SMS, the Till most likely has not enabled the feature, and the standard M-PESA message, balance included, is the only proof of payment available. Safaricom has not said whether customers will be able to switch the receipt off.
How merchants set up staff alerts
Businesses can enable the feature by dialling *234# and using the M-PESA Jumbe menu. The M-PESA Business Hub also supports setup, and support in the M-PESA Business App is expected later.
Safaricom's process for adding staff has several steps:
The owner enters the staff member's name and Safaricom number, then confirms with their M-PESA PIN.
The staff member receives an SMS containing an acceptance code and enters it through a USSD prompt. Alerts start only after that.
Only active Safaricom numbers registered on M-PESA can be nominated. Airtel lines, Till numbers and PayBill numbers cannot.
Business Managers and Operators can manage recipients once the feature is on, subject to approval rules.
A merchant can nominate up to 50 additional users to receive payment notifications. It also reported that nominated users must accept an invitation before alerts begin.
What staff can and cannot see
Staff access is limited to the information needed to confirm a payment. It does not extend to the owner's M-PESA balance, PIN, statement or transaction history. The design separates payment confirmation from account access, which matters for small businesses where owners have often shared a phone or read out messages to employees for lack of another option.
Pochi la Biashara merchants who use personal mobile lines for business. For them, the feature reduces the need to leave a personal phone at the premises so that employees can read incoming payment messages.
Where Jumbe sits in Safaricom's privacy work
Jumbe follows earlier changes aimed at limiting how much customer data reaches merchants. In March 2026, The Central Bank of Kenya had approved Safaricom to introduce phone number masking on M-PESA. Under that arrangement, merchants see a partially hidden number instead of the full one. Pochi la Biashara had already hidden customer numbers from sellers.
The same report linked the change to Kenya's Data Protection Act 2019, which requires that personal data collected in transactions be limited to what is necessary. It also said that Safaricom and the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner were discouraging the practice of asking customers to show their confirmation message, and that merchants were expected to verify payments through business apps, USSD codes such as *334#, or integrated point-of-sale systems.
Jumbe addresses the part of that shift that masking alone did not: a cashier without access to the owner's phone still needs some way to confirm a payment quickly. Staff alerts give them one, and the customer-facing receipt gives shoppers a message they can show when a business still asks for proof.
Open questions
Adoption will depend on merchants. Because the owner's administrator must enable the feature, customers will encounter it only at businesses that have done so, and the standard balance-bearing SMS remains the fallback elsewhere. Safaricom has not published figures on how many shortcodes have enabled Split Notifications.
For shoppers at businesses that have enabled it, the practical change is a choice of which message to show. The Jumbe SMS can go to a cashier or be forwarded to a seller, while the standard M-PESA message, with the balance, stays on the customer's phone.
Comments