In what appeared to be a surprise, banks may have started deducting unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) charges from customers’ accounts. A customer of a leading old-generation bank lamented yesterday that the financial institution removed N7000 from his account without notice.

Speaking to The Guardian, a customer, Jude Ibim (not real name), said he was shocked to see a deduction of N7000 from his account. Ibim, who has maintained an account with the bank for over two decades, said: “The deduction prompted me to visit the bank, which is situated in the Iyana Isolo area of Lagos. The customer care officer described the deduction as unremitted accumulated USSD debt from 2021 to 2024.

“But I queried her that there have been deductions of the amount long before now, especially during the stated period, she only said the bank was yet to deduct and that I was not the only one, but all the bank’s customers that use the USSD platform.”

This supposed USSD deduction comes at a time when bank customers across the country are complaining about the imposition of arbitrary charges on them, even on accounts they rarely use.

These charges include electronic transactions, account maintenance fees, stamp duty charges, and others known as service fees. Banks have been generating billions of naira from these charges, with some surpassing N1 trillion in profits.

Speaking with The Guardian, the President of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), Deolu Ogunbanjo, who expressed bitterness over the rise in these charges, said banks bombard their devices with multiple text messages (SMS) for one statutory transaction.

Ogunbanjo, who described the situation as very unfortunate, and requires urgent intervene by the leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said members are demanding that banks should send us only one SMS for one statutory transaction instead of sending us multiple SMS that end up enriching their coffers and that of the telcos.

The NATCOMS boss appealed to the Bankers Committee to quickly investigate this and save his members from being ripped off their hard-earned money, as well as suffering unmitigated harassment.

“We call on the NCC to rein in the banks through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to save us from undue charges and harassment. Three SMS for the same transaction are not acceptable to us. That is the situation we currently find ourselves in, and this must be corrected in the interest of industrial peace, harmony and improved economic development,” he stated.

Indeed, the USSD imbroglio between the deposit money banks (DMBs) and telcos had lingered for about a year, accumulating to nearly N200 billion.

But the intervention from the Central Bank of Nigeria and the NCC appeared to have brought some headway in the matter.

While end-user billing have been introduced, where USSD charges are now deducted from customers airtime unlike before when banks removed the money, which accumulated to huge debts, Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, had in June, during a virtual telecom event, stated that only three banks remain indebted, all of which have now committed to structured repayment plans.

“The debt, which stood at about N180 billion as of January this year, has now been cleared up to 95 per cent, with only three banks left to pay,” said Adebayo.

According to him, the model, known as end-user billing, allows telecom operators to deduct the standard N6.98 per 120-second USSD session directly from users’ airtime balances. Customers are charged only after receiving and approving a prompt to opt in to the service.

He clarified that while migration to the new model is optional, banks choosing to retain the older corporate billing arrangement must have fully cleared their outstanding debts and must remit all future service fees promptly.

“Those who may not want to migrate to the new method can continue with corporate billing, provided they have paid all their debt and will not owe telecom operators, since they are deducting money from their customers,” he explained. (The Guardian)