Outrage, condemnation trail banks’ deduction of ‘accumulated’ USSD debts from customers accounts

Outrage and condemnations have continued to trail the decision of some commercial banks operating in the country to start deducting unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) charges directly from customers’ accounts. 

Many Nigerians were shocked at the weekend when they started to get alerts from their banks notifying them of the deduction of “outstanding” USSD charges on financial transactions they made in the last four years.

According to some of the aggrieved customers who spoke to Business Hallmark on Sunday, they were quite shocked to receive debit alerts of huge sums of money from their account which their banks claimed were for past transactions made through the unstructured supplementary service data platform.

BH reliably gathered that affected banks actually began the deductions in the last week of July to the chagrin of customers who were caught unaware.

A customer of a first-generation bank in the Abuke-Egba area of Lagos, Tolu Ajayi, informed our correspondent that she received a debit alert of N5,700 from her bank on Saturday which the institution explained as accumulated USSD charges.

“I was shocked by the deduction of a whole N5,700 from my account for what my bank called USSD charges. I was particularly concerned about the deduction as one USSD transaction cost only N6.98.

“What this means is that I used the USSD platform 817 times for me to get a bill of N5,700. To compound my confusion, I couldn’t recollect a time I used the service that my bank didn’t deduct the normal N6.98 charges from my account.

“I was forced to call the customer service unit of my bank on Saturday to lodge a complain. The official who spoke to me on phone described the deduction as accumulated USSD debt from 2021 to 2024.

“I contested the deduction, saying the bank actually deducted the said charges during the stated period.

“However, the official was adamant, insisting the bank didn’t make any deduction from my account until last week. I was also informed that I was not the only one, and that other bank’s customers that use the USSD platform for transactions were affected”, a visibly frustrated Ajayi told our correspondent.

Another bank customer affected by the deduction, Umaru Bala, said he received a debit alert of N11,000 from his bank last Wednesday.

Fortunately for Bala, he said he was in the vicinity of a branch of his bank in the Egbeda area of Lagos and quickly dashed into the banking hall to lodge a complaint.

Like Ajayi, Bala was also shocked when he was told by the customer service officer that attended to him that the deduction was for USSD transactions he made through his phone from 2021 to 2025.

“Unfortunately for me, I don’t use an android phone, but a small Nokia phone that doesn’t have the facilities for opening bank online apps.

“I was not able to resolve the issue for the over thirty minutes I spent in the bank as their officials insisted that the deduction was legitimate.

“So, I have been busy making free money for the banks and GSM companies. I have decided to upgrade my phone to an android phone that can operate bank apps”, Bala stated.

Speaking on the matter, the President of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), Deolu Ogunbanjo, expressed bitterness over the rise in bank charges, saying banks bombard customers devices with multiple text messages (SMS) for one statutory transaction.

Ogunbanjo described the situation as very unfortunate and demanded urgent intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

According to him, his members are demanding that banks should send only one SMS for one statutory transaction instead of sending multiple SMS that end up enriching their coffers and that of the telcos.

The NATCOMS boss appealed to the Bankers Committee to quickly investigate the accumulated USSD and other charges claims to save his members from exploitation.

“We call on the NCC to rein in the banks through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to save us from undue charges and harassment. Three SMS for the same transaction are not acceptable to us.

“That is the situation we currently find ourselves in, and this must be corrected in the interest of industrial peace, harmony and improved economic development”, he stated.

It would be recalled that the USSD imbroglio between telcos and commercial banks (DMBs) had lingered for years, with outstanding claims by telcos climbing to N200 billion.

Before now, banks deduct the money from customers accounts on behalf of the telcos. However, they failed to remit the money, which accumulated to huge debts,

Efforts by the CBN and NCC to resolve the impasse between banks and telcos failed to achieve the desired result until a new arrangement where USSD charges are now allowed to deducted from customers airtime was sanctioned by regulators.

In June, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, said only three banks remain indebted, all of which have now committed to structured repayment plans.

“The debt, which stood at about N180 billion as of January this year, has now been cleared up to 95 per cent, with only three banks left to pay”, said Adebayo.

According to him, the model, known as end-user billing, allows telecom operators to deduct the standard N6.98 per 120-second USSD session directly from users’ airtime balances. Customers are charged only after receiving and approving a prompt to opt in to the service.

He clarified that while migration to the new model is optional, banks choosing to retain the older corporate billing arrangement must have fully cleared their outstanding debts and must remit all future service fees promptly.