MTN customers stranded after MoMoAdvance crash

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MTN Uganda customers cannot access MoMo Advance following a system crash for a period of several hours today.

MoMo Advance is a cash overdraft introduced by MTN last year that enables a customer to transact beyond their available Mobile money balance and automatically deducts the next time a customer gets funds on their account with a 0.5 percent interest rate. By press time, the service had not been restored.

Additionally, MTN has been sending out messages to customers reading, “We are experiencing a system challenge and are working on restoring the service. Please accept our apologies for all the trouble caused.”.

The service was introduced in 2022 after a two-year trial. However, it has been experiencing constant breakdowns.
Customers have also repeatedly complained about a lower limit of just Shs5,000.

According to insiders, it comes less than two months after the Telecom’s Mobile Money system suffered another glitch, which they are still investigating internally.

However, Many Ugandans have lost money through MTN’s mobile money services. A source within this sector confirms to us that the reported cases of mobile money theft, especially from people’s personal accounts to fraudsters, are all common with MTN. This has reportedly forced Ugandans to trust their major competitor, Airtel.

Whereas MTN has been a leader in countrywide mobile money transactions and data sales, reports suggest Airtel is working underground to fix all this, and soon it may eclipse MTN and the latter may be relegated to number two or three with the likes of Lyca Mobile (data) emerging. Some users are also of the view that, whereas MTN’s data is fast, it can be quickly depleted compared to Airtel.

For Mobile Money MTN, some users now prefer using Airtel Money because of its favorable terms when it comes to borrowing—quick loan and wewole for Airtel—compared to MTN’s Mokash and Mosente, whose limits are always low and with a lot of bureaucracy.

In conclusion, It is not clear if the crash is a result of “a breach and system compromise” by suspected fraudsters.

written by @enock katamba

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Mr. katamba Enock: Professional designer with experience in web designing who started this activity in 2019 at Kyambogo University after graduation . Contact me on : (+256-758287080)