Industrial banks within the nation have now cleared 95% of the debt owed to telecom operators for Unstructured Supplementary Service Information (USSD) providers.
The Chairman of the Affiliation of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) Engr. Gbenga Adebayo disclosed this on Thursday throughout a digital chat with the media on the migration to end-user billing for USSD providers.
Based on Adebayo, the debt, which stood at about N180 billion as of January this 12 months, has now been cleared as much as 95%, with solely three banks left to pay up their debt.
Adebayo mentioned this paved the best way for the migration to the end-user billing, as fee of the debt was one of many circumstances for the migration.
“Those that might not need to migrate to the brand new technique can proceed to make use of company billing as lengthy far they’ve paid all their debt and they won’t owe telecom operators as they’re deducting the cash from their clients,” Adebayo mentioned.
The ALTON Chairman additionally assured that the telecom operators will, on their half, do the whole lot to make sure that the transactions are seamless, however famous that failure of transactions may come from the banks.
“If there’s a failure from the community, the shopper won’t be billed, but when it’s from the {bank}, they are going to be billed as a result of it’s profitable from the operator’s facet.
“I need to additionally make clear that if folks see a deduction from their {bank account} after they’ve been charged for his or her airtime, they need to go to the {bank} as a result of the {bank} shouldn’t be imagined to cost them for the service, that’s double billing,” he mentioned.
Responding to a query on how the end-user billing will impression the {bank} clients and telecom subscribers, the Chief Enterprise Enterprise Officer, MTN Nigeria, Lynda Saint-Nwafor, mentioned there is no such thing as a important impression or change except for the truth that they’ll now pay by way of airtime as a substitute of their {bank account}.
Prospects can be paying the identical N6.98 per session (120 seconds), which they’ve been paying prior to now, however by way of their airtime.
She mentioned the telecom operators are eager on transparency in the entire course of, and so they have additionally been mandated by the Nigerian Communications Fee (NCC) to offer month-to-month efficiency statistics and standardized error messaging for USSD transactions.
The telecom operators had on Wednesday, June 18, introduced the graduation of the end-user billing in step with a brand new directive from the NCC.
