Diamond Bank Claims Control of 40% of USSD Transactions

Diamond Bank Plc has revealed that it currently controls 40 percent of the volume of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transaction in the banking sector.

Alex Alozie, head of Operations, Diamond Bank revealed that the bank has over 10 million retail customers across the country.

“As at today, the number of customers using our USSD code, *426#, is even more than the number of people using our app on daily basis and then, in terms of the number of transaction, we control over 40 percent of the industry market on that and then ours is unique because you can actually use any type of phone.”

Uzoma Dozie, managing director of Diamond Bank Plc, attributed the acceptability of its USSD platform to the trust built over the years and customer education which is an important factor for the acceptability of any electronic banking solution.

The USSD technology is a protocol used by network operators to communicate with a service provider platform. It is a session based, real time messaging communication technology and it is considered cost-effective, more user friendly, faster in conducting financial transactions.

Diamond Bank Plc was recently fined N250 million by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) following the apex’s bank investigation on foreign exchange remittances on behalf of telecommunication-giant, MTN.

Result for the half year ended June 2018 shows gross earnings increased from N97.9 billion in 2017 to 98.5 billion in 2018.

Profit Before Tax was 2.9billion for the period ended June 2018, a 69% decrease compared to a profit of 9.5 billion reported for the period ended June 2017.

The bank’s profit after tax for the half year ended 30th June 2018 was 1.80 billion , a 78% decrease compared to a profit of 8.02 billion recorded H1 2017.

Diamond Bank Plc commenced operations as a private limited liability company in 1991, and was listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2005. Its shares were traded at N1.18 as at Friday last week on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange with a one year return of 7.27%.