Telecoms: Nine banks face ussd service disruption over N160 billion debt

Telecom operators have announced plans to disconnect nine banks from access to Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) services starting Monday, January 27, 2025, due to a N160 billion debt. The affected banks have failed to pay outstanding USSD service debts, which originally accumulated to over N200 billion by October 2024 but were reduced after some banks made partial payments.

The nine banks affected are:

• Fidelity Bank
• First City Monument Bank (FCMB)
• JaizBank
• Polaris Bank
• Sterling Bank
• United Bank for Africa (UBA)
• Unity Bank
• Wema Bank
• Zenith Bank

This decision follows approval from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to telecom operators to withdraw USSD services from these banks starting on January 27. The NCC issued a public notice informing customers that they would no longer be able to access the USSD platform of the affected banks for financial transactions, potentially pushing them to switch banks for continued access to the service.

In a statement signed by Reuben Muoka, NCC’s Director of Public Affairs, the commission warned that if the outstanding debts were not cleared by the deadline, telecom operators would disconnect the USSD codes assigned to the banks, and those codes could be reassigned to other applicants.

The outstanding debts have been accumulating since September 2019. Initially, the banks were supposed to remit N6.98 kobo for each financial transaction carried out on the USSD platform, but the payments were never made. Of the 18 financial institutions involved, the nine banks failed to settle their debts despite directives from both the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and NCC issued in December 2024.