Telecommunication giant, Airtel Nigeria said it bills its customers N5 for every 20 seconds spent while carrying out a USSD bank transaction.
This is coming a few days after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) stopped MTN Nigeria Communication Plc from charging customers N4 for USSD transactions.
reported Monday that the body of Nigerian Bank Chief Executive Officers, CEOs, also dismissed claims from MTN that banks requested that customers should be charged for USSD transactions.
MTN had sent a message to its mobile customers that with effect from October 21, 2019, N4 will be charged on every 20 seconds spent while using USSD access to banking services.
“Yello, Please note that from Oct 21, we will charge N4 per 20 seconds for USSD access to banking services. Thank you,” the message had read.
However, our correspondent confirmed that Airtel Nigeria has hitherto been charging its customers for using bank USSDs.
It was learnt that Airtel had on Wednesday billed a customer (name withheld) N15 for carrying out a transaction using the Wema Bank *945#.
Contacted, an Airtel customer care agent, told our correspondent in a message that the organisation charges N5 for every 20 second spent using USSD.
The customer care agent, who identified herself simply as Tope said, “Dear customer, please be informed that on the (Airtel) network, you will be billed N5 for every 20 seconds spent while carrying out an USSD bank transaction. Thank you.”