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The debt owed mobile network operators (MNOs) by deposit money banks (DMBs) over the use of the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) has risen to N150 billion, it was gathered at the weekend. There, however, appears to be light at the dark end of the tunnel as the new leadership at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is making dispassionate efforts to resolve the impasse. Over the last one decade, the USSD– a technology dating back to the 1980s, has gained traction by customers without smartphones to access digital banking services. By just dialing a code, holders of feature phones carry out functions such as cash transfers, checking account balances and generating bank statements. According to the leadership of MNOs, the debt has continued to rise because some of the banks, especially the big ones are not paying and aren’t willing to pay. “I can tell you that debt has moved up to above N150 billion. We have the technology at our backend to track each transaction from point of origination to service delivery. So, we are keeping the record of the debt.”
Nation