Mpesa is a useful and genial service, invented by the telephone company Safaricom Kenyan to allow anyone to shoot without cash and withdraw or send shillings with a simple touch of your mobile phone.
Such a smart and convenient way that many tourists and vacationers, as well as foreign residents, use it to pay anything from an employee at the tuk-tuk, the supermarket or somebody who accompanies you.
But of course every time you invent something as well thought out as to become popular, there are those who try to take the opportunity to draw illegally benefit. So does Mpesa. Given the high difficulty to hack your contacts, text messages that a recent run communicate in English has been credited to your account Mpesa.
Messages are the perfect reproduction of the ones that come through Mpesa, with the transfer code, the receipt number and the name of the person who would carry out the transfer, with his phone number. And a number of other words and codes, with the exception of no return the balance, but to score that the service is temporarily "locked". Shortly after the alleged telephone call direct question, that apologizing, talk about a mistake and kindly ask you to get back the money erronamente shipped to you.
The deception is that the previous credit was not coming from a number of Mpesa, but as a private number, the same one that calls for the rapid refund.
So always check that a Mpesa credit arrivals from Mpesa and not from a private number and especially not returned anything to anyone. Everyone has the opportunity to contact the flight service to cancel any erroneous credit.
Scammers are people who have had access to a number of Kenyans database owned by foreigners and leverage on this.