Lagos, June 20, 2025 – Banks in the country have paid about 95% of their debts to telecom operators for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) services.
Gbenga Adebayo, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), disclosed this on Thursday during a virtual media briefing
He said the debt stock was about N180 billion in January, but had now been paid up to 95%.
The ALTON executive said only three banks, which settled for installment repayment, were yet to fully repaid their debts.
He said the repayment of the debt had facilitated migration to the end-user billing.
According to Adebayo, the end-user billing means customer charges for USSD services will now be deducted from mobile airtime instead of a bank account.
He, however, said only one of the major banks had successfully migrated to the system, while others were just in the process of being migrated.
The USSD debts had been a contentious issue between banks and telecom operators in the last few years and it took the intervention of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Telecommunications Commission (NCC) to resolve the issue by through repayment terms .
