MTN USSD Charges: Banks Distance Themselves From The Decision

Commercial banks Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have said thatMTN’s decision to start charging customers on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transactions did not come from them.

The denial was made yesterday, a day afterMTNwas directed by the federal government to suspend the introduction of service charge on USSD transactions, which was supposed to take effect from yesterday.

Mr. Godwin Emefiele, Governor of theCentral Bank of Nigeria (CBN), had on Sunday ordered commercial banks and other financial institutions to ignore the move to impose USSD charges on customers.

Speaking further on the issue, the banks CEOs said the decision to charge customers for USSD transactions and what amount to charge them rested entirely on the telecommunications company, similar to how they charged customers for calls, SMS, and data.

MTN had sent a notification last week to its subscribers, informing them that from October 21, they would be charged N4 per 20 seconds for USSD access to banking services.