When PayPal announced their Partnernship with Safaricom’s M-PESA service, I personally thought that making transactions online directly from my M-PESA without the need to add funds to my bank had got a solution. But, this looks to have never been fulfilled at least on my side.

My name is JOY, and Yes, I own a PayPal account and a M-Pesa account which is in good working condition. Both of my accounts are in good standing thus meaning that I am able to transact either way. When I load funds on my MPESA, I am able to use them for different purposes including sending, payments and Airtime. The same happens to my PayPal account.

A few days back, I decided to start using PayPal’s new feature of linking my M-PESA with my PayPal but for a full week now, this has failed to work. First I thought it was a temporary problem but now, I am coming to think that it is something more less permanent on my side as every attempt returns this error ” Sorry, we can’t link these accounts. The Safaricom M-PESA validation service is currently unavailable.Try again or contact us.”

All efforts to link my M-PESA with PayPal have been fruitful besides the fact that I have tried to contact both parties involved right from TransferTO, Safaricom and the latest being PayPal. The sad thing is that Transferto confirmed it was Safaricom’s error while Safaricom said it was something to do with PayPal side. See responses below.

Like you see the above, Safaricom said that I had to update the names on my account. The exact way the wrote as the format is what my names are on PayPal. This made me wonder which is which and who is supposed to rectify the above.

My worry is not being in position to link my accounts due to this error “Sorry, we can’t link these accounts. The Safaricom M-PESA validation service is currently unavailable.Try again or contact us.” which I am starting to think that neither of the three is able to solve it.

My question and the reason for this post is to know if any of you has gone through the same and if yes, how you managed to have this solved. I really need to link this up and hopefully your answers via comments will help me successfully link my M-PESA with PayPal.