Commercial banks have notified their customers that they will commence deduction of a flat fee of N6.98 for every banking transaction carried out on all Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) banking platforms.
Customers are required to pay a fee of N6.98 to their mobile network provider for every USSD transaction. The fee will be deducted by banks without any further recourse to the customers and remitted in full to the telecoms companies.
“This means that when you send money to anyone using USSD, a fee of N6.98 will be charged to your bank account, which is in turn remitted in full by your bank, to your mobile network provider,” the banks stated in almost similar circular.
USSD is a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol that is used to send text messages. USSD is similar to Short Message Service (SMS) but in the banking industry, allows users without a smartphone or data/internet connection to do mobile banking through the use of codes. USSD-based mobile banking can be used for fund transfers, checking account balance, generating bank statement, among other uses.
According to the notice, airtime and data purchases through USSD are exempt from this charge on USSD platforms.
The banks stated they have provided alternative platforms for customers in order to have free options for their electronic and digital banking transactions, including various self-service mobile banking apps.