Kenya: M-Pesa beats most traditional banks on customer sentiment, survey finds

DataEQ tracked 330,000 Twitter posts mentioning Absa, Co-operative Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Equity Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, NCBA Bank and Stanbic in 2021. A sample of the posts was analysed and each one was ranked as either positive, negative, or neutral.

Negative sentiment slightly outweighed positive sentiment for M-Pesa, resulting in a -1.0% net sentiment score for 2021. The score compared with an overall net sentiment score of -7.6% for the banking industry. That was despite the fact that social media conversation about M-Pesa jumped by 116% from 2020 to 2021.

Digital experience was a leading feature of consumer conversation across the industry, driven by system outages and app downtime. This “left consumers unable to complete critical transactions, with many expressing a loss of confidence” as a result.  These downtime spikes often coincided with month-end when many routine