The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ALTON) has thrown its weight behind the new USSD billing policy End User Billing (EUB) introduced by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The policy, which mandates direct deduction of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) service charges from customers’ airtime, is expected to resolve the long-standing issue of banks failing to remit payments to telecommunication operators.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Sun, Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of ALTON, was hopeful that the initiative would address all lingering challenges.
He said, “Yes, we think the new USSD billing policy will solve telcos/banks’ disagreement on remittances, because what it will do is that the cost of using USSD will now be deducted from customers’ airtime. So, the obligation of paying for that will no longer be on the banks. It will rather be on the customers’ airtime.”
Adebayo provided context on the previous corporate billing system, explaining that banks would collect charges from customers’ accounts for USSD services and were then responsible for remitting these funds to the operators. However, this system was plagued by remittance failures.
