JamboPay Shutdown Crisis, Customers’ Money Held for Months

The abrupt JamboPay shutdown crisis has left thousands of Kenyan merchants and individuals stranded after the once-popular payment gateway allegedly held customer funds for up to three months without processing payouts, prompting furious questions about whether the platform is undergoing maintenance, quietly winding down, or facing deeper financial trouble.

Users woke up this week to find the main JamboPay portal completely offline, with error messages replacing login pages and an expired SSL certificate that now redirects to an obscure ePayments site registered under Kajiado County Government.

The JamboPay shutdown crisis escalated on Tuesday when small business owners across Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu reported zero withdrawals since early September 2025. “We have over 680,000 shillings sitting in our JamboPay account from September sales,” said Mary Wambui, who runs an online clothing store in Eastlands.

“Every week they promise disbursement next Monday, then silence. Now the entire website is dead.” Similar complaints flooded WhatsApp merchant groups, with screenshots showing pending balances dating back to August.

What has raised even louder alarm bells is the technical state of the platform. Independent cybersecurity analysts who checked the domain jambopay.com discovered that the SSL certificate expired weeks ago and currently resolves to a different entity altogether: “ePayments – County Government of Kajiado”.

This has sparked speculation that customer funds may have been routed through an entirely different processor without disclosure. “When your payment gateway’s security certificate points to a county government server in the middle of Maasai land, that’s not maintenance, that’s a red flag,” commented Nairobi-based fintech expert Victor Omondi.

JamboPay, launched in 2012 as one of Kenya’s earliest online payment aggregators, was widely used by county governments, schools, parking systems, and thousands of SMEs for collecting payments via M-Pesa, cards, and bank transfers. At its peak it processed billions annually and boasted integration with over forty banks.

Yet insiders say the company has been struggling since the Central Bank of Kenya tightened PSP licensing rules in 2023, leaving several smaller players unable to meet new capital and reporting thresholds.

Attempts to reach JamboPay’s listed phone lines return either busy tones or automated messages saying “the subscriber cannot be reached”.

Their official Twitter/X account last posted in July 2025, and the Facebook page has been deleted entirely. The only public statement came via a brief notice on a cached version of their site claiming “system upgrades and migration to a more secure platform”, with no timeline given.

Merchants are now scrambling for alternatives. Many have switched to Pesapal, iPay, or direct M-Pesa Paybill numbers, but recovering trapped funds remains the priority. “Some of us run payroll from these collections,” said Joseph Kamau, owner of a Westlands electronics shop owed 1.2 million shillings. “Three months without that money means we can’t pay suppliers or staff. This is not just inconvenience; it’s business collapse.”

Consumer protection groups have called for immediate intervention. “When a PSP goes dark and customer money is unaccounted for, CBK must freeze all related accounts and appoint an administrator,” said Stephen Mutoro, secretary-general of the Consumers Federation of Kenya. “Kenyans cannot keep losing millions every time a payment company decides to play hide-and-seek.”

As the JamboPay shutdown crisis enters its eighth week with no official communication. One merchant reacted with a chilling discovery: several recent bank transfers meant for JamboPay were actually landing in personal accounts linked to former directors.

For now, thousands of Kenyan entrepreneurs stare at frozen dashboards showing healthy balances they cannot touch, while a once-trusted brand appears to have vanished into digital thin air, leaving only an expired certificate and a county government server as the last trace of where their money might have gone.