Safaricom has discontinued its prepay roaming top up services in East Africa, which allowed users to top-up their lines using airtime/scratch cards from roaming partners in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi.

As reported by techweez, the announcement comes after the telecommunications company stated that “there are better options that have made the scrapped service fall behind its time.”

The telco introduced prepay roaming top-up services in 2008 in an effort to enhance roaming within East African nations.

Using the service, customers could top-up their lines using airtime/scratch cards from roaming partners in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi. “Prior to its introduction, Safaricom subscribers in those regions had a challenge in topping up their lines for SMS, voice and data services. In most cases, travellers were forced to purchase airtime from credit vendors on a premium than it normally costs,” reports techweez.

Safaricom says, “However, availability of better options for topping up has rendered this service obsolete. Safaricom customers will still be able to top up while roaming through M-Pesa and Sambaza.”

Safaricom says prepay users who make trips around the East African bloc will use M-Pesa or Sambaza to load their lines for communication purposes.

Techweez says, “This makes sense as Safaricom continues to improve its money-minting platform for better services and options.

"Apart from purchasing airtime from an M-Pesa account, the product has been spun by the telco to incorporate various services, including Lipa na M-Pesa that cuts through paying bills and buying goods and services for thousands of businesses, to mention a few.”