The Association of Licensed Telecom Operators in Nigeria (ALTON) has announced withdrawal of USSD services it provides to Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) over N120 billion debt.
A statement issued on Friday, May 12, and signed by the Chairman and Head of Operations of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo and Gbolahan Awonuga, said the approval was granted because banks have continued to incur greater and greater debt, without making the commensurate payments.
ALTON, an umbrella body of the telcom companies in the country, noted this done despite multi-party stakeholder efforts to resolve the situation and prevent any impact on its services.
The statement read “Every time some progress is made, the Deposit Money Banks, DMBs come up with reasons to take stakeholders several steps back, in this matter.
”Members of the public will recall that Mobile Network Operators, MNOs and DMBs have had protracted disagreements concerning the appropriate USSD pricing model for financial transactions, transparency of charges, mode of collection and liability for payment of the outstanding and continuous service fees due to the MNOs (which currently stands at over N120 Billion).
“Due to the inability of MNOs and DMBs to reach an agreement on the issues, MNOs in 2021 sought to disconnect DMBs due to the unpaid debts which stood at N42 billion as of that time.
”It is now obvious that the level of debt is unsustainable given the time/value huge cost of the continuous upgrade and operation of the systems and infrastructure dedicated to supporting USSD transactions of DMBs.
“In view of the foregoing, unless DBMs meet their debt obligations, MNOs will disconnect all banks indebted to them for USSD services rendered.”
Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) is a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol that is used to send text messages.
This is similar to Short Message Service (SMS) but in the banking industry, allows users without a smartphone or data and internet connection to do mobile banking through the use of codes. USSD-based mobile banking can be used for fund transfers, checking account balances, and generating bank statements, among other uses.
The huge debts came as a result of deductions made by way of commission by the banks during banking transactions but were never remitted to the telecomm operators that own the infrastructure on which the transactions thrive.
