USSD debt: Banks move to avoid disconnection

Ahead of the impending disconnection of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) of nine commercial banks, the affected deposit money banks have now begun moves to settle their debt before the January 27th deadline. Sources within the telecom operators confirmed to Nairametrics that some of the banks had started paying part of their debt while those […]

Ahead of the impending disconnection of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) of nine commercial banks, the affected deposit money banks have now begun moves to settle their debt before the January 27th deadline.

Sources within the telecom operators confirmed to Nairametrics that some of the banks had started paying part of their debt while those that are yet to start are calling for negotiation contrary to their defiant stand before the sanction was announced.

This is even as the operators blamed the telecom regulator for dragging its feet in taking action, which led to the accumulation of the debt to about N160 billion until late last year when some of the banks started paying.

USSD banking is an SMS-based mobile banking service that allows users to interact with their bank directly from their mobile phones.

Millions of Nigerian bank customers use the USSD codes to access financial services like transfers, bill payments and airtime recharges on a daily basis.

Move to save revenue, retain customers

Aside from the threat of disconnection from the networks, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in a public notice issued last week said it would also withdraw the shortcodes allocated to the nine affected banks after January 27th.

According to a top official of one of the telecom companies, who would not want to be named because he was not authorised to speak, these sanctions, which could have a far-reaching impact on the banks’ revenue and their customer base, have prompted them to start making moves to resolve the issue.

“Some of them have started paying in bits because they know this could impact their revenue. Those who have refused to listen to us before are now calling for negotiation.

“This is what they could have done long before now but because there was no regulatory pronouncement, they never took it seriously,” the source said.