Emma Okonji
Officials of MTN Nigeria and Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), including their regulators, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) respectively, yesterday, continued with their series of meetings, where a fresh decision was reached on how to resolve the current USSD recharge impasse between the banks and MTN
According to the agreement reached yesterday, both feuding parties were asked to come up with long-term pricing structure that is of international best practice that would be applied to all charges relating to Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code.
It was also agreed that while the banks and MTN work out the new pricing structure, MTN should maintain status quo and revert to the old billing where it offered 4.5 per cent commission to the banks for all USSD charges.
MTN and the banks had been at loggerheads over USSD charges and their commission, which is purely a commercial dispute, leading to the disconnection of all MTN customers by the banks, from the use of the USSD channels in all banking transactions, before the intervention of their regulators, the NCC and the CBN.
The regulators called for a meeting to resolve the impasse, at the instance of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ibrahim Pantami.
Following the commercial dispute, the banks had on Thursday last week, disconnected only MTN customers from accessing the USSD code on airtime vending from all bank channels that were linked to USSD code. According to the banks, they took the decision to disconnect MTN, because it reduced the discount offered to banks on airtime sales from 4.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent, which did not go down well with banks considering the cost of managing the infrastructure and other operational costs they incurred.
After the intervention of the minister and their regulators on Sunday this week, the banks reconnected all MTN customers, pending when the issue would be resolved.
In a statement released at the end of yesterday’s meeting by MTN, and distributed by its Senior Manager, External Relations, Mr. Funso Aina, MTN said: “Following the temporary suspension of sales of MTN products through our banking channel partners on April 2, 2021, services were restored on Sunday, April 4, 2021 with customers able to access all services. This was agreed on the basis that MTN would revert to its previous cost of sales structures with banking partners, until a new long-term agreement can be reached on a sustainable pricing structure going forward.
“Consequent on the intervention of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, the Nigeria Communication Commission and the Central Bank of Nigeria, since April 6, 2021, MTN has been participating in a series of meetings to align on longer term pricing structures. We will provide a further market update once these discussions have been concluded. The streamlining MTN undertook is international standard and best practice as scale is built along distribution channels. We are confident that partners in the banking sector will work with us to ensure this process concludes as quickly as possible to the benefit of the entire industry.”
MTN thanked all its customers for their patience, and expressed its regret at the inconvenience imposed on them while banking channels were offline. In order to further expand the range of channels available to customers, MTN said it has activated a number of new channel partnerships with fintech partners, adding that these will remain in place, significantly expanding the channels available to its customers and increasing its sales and distribution network.
