Emma Okonji
Nine Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) earlier pencilled down for disconnection today from the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) service will no longer be disconnected from the financial service, following a last-minute payment of their accumulated debts, which reached N160 billion in November last year, THISDAY has learnt.
Before November last year, 18 DMBs owed telecoms operators over N200 billion from USSD debt accumulation, which the banks had refused to remit since 2019. But between October and November last year, some of the banks cleared their outstanding debts, except nine that failed to make payment as at November last year.
The development reduced the outstanding USSD debt from over N200 billion to N160 billion.
Worried about the humungous debt, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), penultimate week, gave approval to telecoms operators to disconnect the remaining nine banks that were yet to pay the USSD debt.
Although the approval for disconnection was to take effect from today (January 27, 2025), THISDAY learnt that the remaining nine banks cleared their outstanding USSD debt before the close of work on Friday last week, a move that restrained the telcos from disconnecting the banks from the USSD service today as earlier planned.
THISDAY also learnt that the nine banks, while clearing their outstanding debts, decided to withhold part of the debt, which according to them, was the summation of the 10 seconds USSD billing time approved by NCC and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for all USSD transactions.
The 10 seconds USSD billing time, which is now a bone of contention between telecoms operators and the banks, is expected to be addressed by the telcos and the banks anytime soon.
NCC and CBN had earlier shifted the USSD billing time from five seconds to 10 seconds. It stipulates that banks should start billing customers using the USSD code, after 10 seconds of the commencement of the transaction time.
The USSD code transaction begins from the time the bank customer dials the USSD code of a particular telecoms operator, and follows the instructions to select bank, impute PIN and confirm PIN, till the transaction is completed as successful.
At the end of a successful USSD transaction, the banks debit the customer and they are expected to remit the sum of N6.98k for every successful USSD transaction, to the telecoms operator whose code was used for the USSD transaction, but the banks will not remit to the telecoms operators.
The USSD debt controversy started since 2019, when telcos developed their different USSD codes as platforms for financial transactions, and NCC, which regulates the telecoms sector, assigned the different codes to banks with the agreement that banks will remit N6.98k to each telecoms operator, whenever the bank customer uses the USSD code for financial transaction that is successful.
But the non-remittance led to accumulation of USSD debt, which reached over N200 billion as at October 2024, but dropped to N160 billion in November 2024, before the debt was gradually cleared off on Friday.
