Banks commence N6.98 USSD charge, customers kick

Some banks have notified their customers that they will start charging them N6.9 for every USSD transaction.

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 the bank, to your mobile network provider.

However, experts have said that excessive charges by banks could pose a threat to financial inclusion.

According to them, it will increase cash transactions because many bank customers would avoid using USSD for transactions and could also discourage the unbanked segment of the population because they would not like to pay such charges over their little deposits.

Meanwhile, mobile network providers may earn at least N5bn in a year from bank customers who use Unstructured Supplementary Service Data banking platforms for transactions.

In 2020, the total number of USSD transactions in Nigeria, was 762 million, according to technext.ng.