UPDATED: You may no longer be able to use your bank's USSD service in Nigeria techpoint.africa - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from techpoint.africa Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Nigeria telcos to block millions from mobile banking over banks debt
Millions of Nigerians use the USSD to access banking services daily, but telcos say they are being owed by banks.
Telephone companies in Nigeria have threatened to suspend USSD services over indebtedness by banks.
Millions of Nigerians use the shortcode platform to access banking services daily through their phones, but the telcos say they are being owed by the banks.
In a statement signed by its chairman, Gbenga Adebayo, and head of operations, Gbolahan Awonuga, the group on Friday explained that the withdrawal became necessary after its members and banks failed to reach an agreement on a payment structure that will exclude phone users.
Nigerian mobile network operators have threatened to discontinue the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) short code service by some banks effective Monday March 15, 2021 over N42 billion debt owed them.
Stakeholders demand six-month NIN-SIM linkage deadline extension
Temiloluwa O’Peters
Stakeholders in the telecom space have called for further extension of the National Identification Number and Subscriber Identity Module integration exercise by six months.
They noted that the eight weeks extension given by government on Tuesday would not be enough going by the number of Nigerians yet to be registered, as well as other challenges with the NIN enrolment.
Reacting to the extension, the National Coordinator, Alliance for Affordable Internet, Olusola Teniola, stated that the April 6 deadline would not be sufficient to register every single NIN.
Teniola observed that the SIM registration database at present could not represent all Nigerians, saying it would represent at most 65 to 95 million Nigerians.