Banks in the country have paid about 95% of their Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) charges to Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), thereby mitigating the lingering disagreement between the two parties over the past years.
The Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, who made this disclosure on Thursday during a virtual media briefing, said debt stock which stood at about N180 billion in January had now been paid up to 95%.
According to him, only three banks, which settled for installment repayment, were yet to fully repaid their debts.
The industry expert explained that the payment of the debt by the banks had facilitated migration to the end-user billing, which implies that from now customer charges for USSD services will now be deducted from mobile airtime instead of a bank account.
He, however, said only one of the major banks had successfully migrated to the system, while others were just in the process of being migrated.
The USSD debts had remained a contentious issue between banks and the MNOs over the past few years and necessitated the interventions of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to resolve the issue by through repayment terms.
