The lingering dispute between commercial banks and telecoms operators over Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) charges have led to a disconnection MTN customers from banking channels.
It was gathered that the disconnection affected USSD services and banking apps.
MTN customers complained on Friday about being unable to make payments and recharge their MTN lines using USSD apps and baking apps.
It was gathered that discussion regarding revenue sharing between the banks and the telco has disintegrated, leading to disconnection of the services without prior notice to the to the telco and customers.
It was learnt that MTN had reduced the banks’ commission from an average of 3.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent which predicated the actions of the banks.
According to industry sources, the reduction is standard because the volumes compensate for the reduction, adding that the contract with convenience channel partners and aggregators through which they were indirectly connected to the banks allowed this.
