N80b banks' telcos debt threatens cashless policy

• Published date: 16 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

Telecom operators have warned of possible service support withdrawal to commercial banks over an accumulated N80 billion debt that arose over the use of the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).

The group, Association of Licensed Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), said it remained a cause of worry why despite the intervention of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami and others, the banks refused to pay the debt which has risen to over N80 billion.

Chairman of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, in a telephone interview, said the major threat to the policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is the refusal of commercial banks to pay the service providers the money they have deducted from customers for services provided using the telecoms infrastructure.

'The big elephant in the house is the USSD debt which has now reached N80 billion in spite of the ministerial interventions. One day, we will get to the point where we will operate the no pay, no service policy. This will, no doubt, frustrate the entire industry. It is one major threat to the cashless policy because, no matter how long it takes, one day, we will implement our commercial terms,' he said.

He assured the subscribers of the readiness of the telecoms operators to continue to expand infrastructure to make end user experience better, he nonetheless said the operators will withdraw support for transactions that ride on the USSD platform.

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