By Dipo Olowookere
Commercial banks operating in Nigeria have sent messages to their customers, informing them of the latest fee being charged for completing a financial transaction via the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) codes.
In order to deepen financial inclusion in the country, financial institutions deployed technology by working together with telecommunications firms to enable the use of codes to execute banking services.
However, due to issues surrounding how to share the charges, the telcos disrupted the operations and it took the prompt inventions of the banking and telecoms regulators to restore the services.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) held talks with the parties and it was agreed that customers would have to pay N6.98 for each transaction they carry out using the USSD codes.
On Friday, several deposit money banks (DMBs) notified their customers of the commencement of the new N6.98 USSD transactions fee.
One of them, GTBank, in a message seen by Business Post, advised its customers to also consider the use of its mobile banking application to escape the N6.98 transaction fee.
“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 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 your bank, to your mobile network provider.
“Please note that airtime and data purchases via USSD are exempt from this charge on USSD platforms.
“As our customer, we are making sure you have as many options as possible for all your financial transactions. You can send money to anyone and pay bills anytime using our GTWorld Mobile App, at no extra charge,” the notice said.
Another bank, Fidelity Bank, in its e-mail message to customers, disclosed that, “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.
“Please note that airtime and data purchases via USSD are exempt from this charge
“Remember, you can enjoy easy transfers, bills payment, loan requests and even check your account balance at no cost when you use the Fidelity Online Banking app. So, download it now if you haven’t already and enjoy banking with ease.”
On its part, UBA said, “In line with our promise to keep you updated about changes that may affect services you have access to, please be informed that a flat session fee of N6.98 for all USSD banking transactions (*919#) has been introduced by your mobile network provider.
“When you perform banking transactions like money transfers, bill payments or balance enquiries on USSD (*919#), you will be charged this flat session fee of N6.98 from your bank account and the funds will be remitted 100% to your mobile service provider.
”Kindly note that Airtime top-up and Data purchase are exempted from this charge.
“Remember that you can also perform your banking transactions with ease via any of our digital banking channels. Our brand new UBA Mobile App is totally personalised, easy to use, has loads of exciting new features. It was made just for you.”
Modupe Gbadeyanka 
Aduragbemi Omiyale