January 21, 2025
By Idris Buba
The nine commercial banks affected in the impending disconnection of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) have now begun moves to settle their debt before the January 27th deadline.
The USSD banking is an SMS-based mobile banking service that allows users to interact with their bank directly from their mobile phones
Sources within the telecom operators confirmed that contrary to their earlier defiant stand before the sanction was announced, some of the banks had started paying part of their debt while those that are yet to start are calling for negotiation.
However, operators have blamed the telecom regulator for foot dragging in taking action which led to the accumulation of the debt to about N160 billion until some of the banks started paying late last year.
Millions of bank customers in Nigeria, on daily basis, use the USSD codes to access financial services like transfers, bill payments, and airtime recharges.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had in a public notice issued last week said aside disconnection by telecom operators, it would also withdraw the shortcodes allocated to the nine affected banks after deadline for payment.
READ MORE; NCC Grants Telcos Approval To Disconnect Nine Banks Over USSD Debt.
The sanctions, would have had a far-reaching impact on the banks’ revenue and their customer base, hence the moves to amicably resolve the payments.
.The NCC and the CBN had in a circular dated December 20, 2024, signed by the Ag Director of the Payments System Management Department at the CBN, Oladimeji Taiwo, and the Head of Legal and Regulatory Services at the NCC, Chizua Whyte, outlined specific measures for debt settlement.
According to the circular, DMBs are mandated to settle 85% of all outstanding invoices issued after the implementation of Application Programming Interfaces by December 31, 2024.
Additionally, all future invoices must also be settled at 85% within one month of issuance.
Banks are required to pay 60% of invoices predating the API implementation as full and final settlement.
Payment plans, whether lump sum or installments, must be finalized between DMBs and MNOs by January 2, 2025.
Where installment payments are proposed, such plans must consist of equal monthly payments, with all payments completed by July 2, 2025.
