Banks lift blockage of USSD transactions on MTN

Commercial banks have reconnected MTN customers earlier denied access to the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) payment channels.

This happened after Karl Toriola, managing director and chief executive officer of MTN Nigeria, announced the decision to revert discount offered to banks on airtime sales to 4.5 percent commission after it was reduced to 2.5 percent by the telco.

The mobile network operator (MNO) had reduced banks’ commission from an average of 3.5 percent to 2.5 percent, this led to a disagreement between MTN and commercial banks.

During the blockage, MTN announced alternative payment platforms for customers to recharge their phones. Such platforms includes, Flutterwave, Jumia Pay, OPay, Kuda etc.