Kenya Power, which trades under the KPLC ticker on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, has blamed mobile money transfer services for the over 15-hour delay in token purchase.

In a statement on Monday night, the utility firm indicated that the delay affected prepaid customers who were trying to top up.

The service was unavailable beginning at around 3 pm and the earliest customers to receive their tokens was at a few minutes to midnight.

"A technical glitch affecting (the mobile money service) is preventing our prepaid customers from buying electricity tokens currently," read the statement in part.

"The responsible team is working to resolve the hitch, and we expect to resume normal service as soon as possible."

Kenya Power, as a result, advised its customers to use alternative payment methods including bank transactions.

Token purchase delay enraged customers, some of whom complained that they had already made the transactions but could not receive the messages.

They complained that switching to other payment methods was counterproductive since their funds were in their mobile money wallets.

"Kenya Power is very unreliable! How else are you people buying tokens apart from using Kenya Power's paybill that takes ages to send a message? I am still in the darkness," lamented Janet Machuka.

A section of customers even lamented that the service was still down this morning.

"Hi, I've bought tokens three times this morning and none is back. Kindly check," Lucie Serero tweeted at Kenya Power at 6:54 am.

Earlier, The Statesmanreported that Kenyans will receive fewer tokens in January compared to last year in its latest electricity review.

Towards the end of December, Kenyans who purchased tokens worth Ksh250 received 8.87 units while in January, the amount only generated 7.82 units.

The change in token value was occasioned by the sharp increase in the forex adjustment charge which rose from Ksh28.11 to Ksh50.53.