The disquiet between Nigerian banks and telecommunications operators over the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) debt is continuing, as telcos disclosed, on Thursday that the debt has risen to N80 billion.
Gbenga Adebayo, Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), revealed this in Lagos, warning that telcos may disconnect service, to defaulting banks.
It will be recalled that the USSD debt had hit N45 billion as at April 2021. If the threat is carried out, bank customers will have problems with transfers as well as other transactions associated with the service.
Already, most of the banks’ digital channels are overstretched, leading to epileptic services. The challenge, according to sources, has been compounded by the mass resignation of most of the IT experts in the banks, who have relocated abroad