Nigerian banks yesterday claimed they are not indebted to MTN Nigeria and other phone companies for using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) shortcode service to provide payment services.
This is coming as telcos and banks continue to disagree over pricing for the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data shortcode service.
“There is no such thing as an obligation due from banks to telcos,” Herbert Wigwe, chief executive officer of Access Bank Plc, said on an investor call in Lagos, according to Bloomberg.
“We chose not to make a public statement out of it because it is not appropriate for us to be found fighting with telcos in public,” he said Thursday.
Wigwe is the head of a team of bank CEOs that has been in discussion with MTN Nigeria to resolve a dispute that led some banks to cut off the company from their banking platforms last week.
This was after MTN, Nigeria biggest telecom services provider, reduced a commission charged on airtime purchases through banking channels by almost half to 2.5%.
The action against MTN was an escalation of an ongoing dispute between lenders and telcos in Africa’s largest economy over fees chargeable on services carried out on each others’ platforms.
Recall that telecom operators under the aegis of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) claimed that the banks owed them over N42 billion in debts for the past eight months.
The telcos claimed that since the USSD Pricing determination by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which resulted in a price review of USSD service by its members, banks were yet to pay them the accumulated USSD transactions cost.
ALTON threatened last month to disconnect banks from providing payment services on telco platforms until they paid the N42 billion debt.
The threat was called off after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy intervened in the dispute leading to an agreement to charge a fixed amount and also settle any indebtedness for past services.
The telecom companies are asking the banks to remit money to them even for transactions that did not take place, Wigwe said.
“It is true that they continue to provide this service but this service has nothing to do with the banks,” he said.
