Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of commercial banks have distanced themselves from the moves by MTN Nigeria to impose charges on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transactions.
The bank chief executives under the aegis of Body of Bank CEOs that have the MD/CEO of Access Bank Plc, Mr. Herbert Wigwe, as chairman, said in a statement Monday that they never asked MTN to start charging customers as contained in the text message sent by the telecommunication company.
Their denial came a day after the federal government ordered MTN to suspend the introduction of service charge on USSD transactions, which was billed to take off on the 21 of October.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, had on Sunday also directed commercial banks and other financial institutions under its regulation to shun the moves to impose charges on USSD services.
Providing further clarification of the service charge, the banks CEOs said the decision on whether, and what amount, to charge a customer for accessing USSD was entirely that of the telco company, in the same way a customer is billed for calls, SMS and data.
The bank CEOs said: “We wish to state as follows: That the banks did not ask MTN to start charging customers as contained in the text message. The decision on whether, and what amount, to charge a customer for accessing USSD is entirely that of the telco company, in the same way a customer is billed for calls, SMS and data.”
According to the CEOs, MTN remains the only telco that is yet to implement end-user billing, “which is the standard practice for customer-initiated transactions.”
This, they said, was despite the fact that the banks, working with the CBN had engaged MTN for more than one year to try and bring down the cost of USSD to aid financial inclusion.
“That the banks are determined to pursue the National Financial Inclusion Strategy of the federal government of Nigeria and will continue to advocate that telcos identify wholeheartedly with this laudable initiative and implement transparent and low pricing model in the use of USSD access codes.
“We wish to reiterate that financial transaction charges are regulated by the CBN as stipulated in the Bankers’ Tariff, and that the charges for financial transactions carried out with banks remain unchanged,” the statement added.