“USSD is a clumsy technology. It’s not state-of-the-art. The best way to have financial inclusion is to crash the cost of data so that data becomes more affordable. Then we can use what is a superior technology.”
Those were the words of Segun Agbaje, CEO of Guaranty Trust Holding Company as he presented the company’s FY 2022 and Q1 2023 reports.
Over the past decade, USSD has gone from a tool primarily used by telcos to one used by commercial banks in Nigeria as they attempt to reach a different class of users.
With it, users who do not have access to the smartphones on which digital banking apps run have been able to access banking services without walking into a banking hall. This now looks to be coming to an end courtesy of a protracted dispute between banks and telcos.
A long-standing dispute comes to a sorry end
Since 2019, both parties have been embroiled in a dispute, first over debts owed to telcos and later over who charges the customer for using USSD codes. In 2021,…
