Business
GTBank, Polaris set charges for every USSD transaction
Nigerian banks are now charging their customers for every transaction made through the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code after months of disagreements with telecommunications companies.
Guaranty Trust Bank and Polaris Bank are some of the financial institutions putting a price tag on the use of their USSD code according to a statement sent to GTBank customers, and seen by Ripples Nigeria.
Prior to the new charges, the banks and the telcos have been at loggerheads over commissions and which institution was behind the charges following criticism from customers – they have now agreed on the way forward on charges.
The banks are debiting customers N6.98 for every transaction, but excluded airtime and data purchase from the USSD charge. It was gathered that the charges will be remitted to network providers.
“Please be informed that you are now required to pay a fee of N6.98 to your mobile network provider for every banking transaction carried out on all USSD banking platforms.
“This means that when you access any banking service 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”, Polaris said in a message to customers.
By Fakoyejo Ayodeji
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