According to statistics from the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the value of online bills, or “E-Bills,” has increased by 53%. Mobile Phone Transfer
According to the most recent NIBSS data, the amount of bills paid electronically went from N2.3 trillion in 2021 to N2.8 trillion in 2022.
E-Bills Pay is a real-time, account-based online service that makes it easy to pay bills from an account. It guarantees immediate credit for payments and receipt of collections for billers and merchants hired through the platform.
The platform is being utilized to pay for things like utility bills, cable TV plans, hotel and flight reservations, school tuition, and airtime top-ups.
More Nigerians are now accepting electronic bill payment as opposed to paying with cash, per NIBSS data.
NIBSS reports that users will transfer N19.4 trillion via mobile in 2022. This represents a 142% annual growth over transaction value of N8 trillion in 2021.
According to the NIBSS data, the number of mobile inter-scheme transactions increased from 284.5 million in 2021 to 609 million in 2022, a rise of 151% year over year.
It can be inferred that the country’s rising mobile connections have had an effect on the boom in the use of mobile devices for financial transactions.
218 million of the 321 million connected lines, as of November 2022, were on the networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which rose by 19.2 between January and October this year.
The accumulated debt from the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), owed to them by banks, rose to N80 billion as of last November, according to the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), but they have warned that it poses a threat to the growth of mobile financial transactions and other digital channels. Mobile Phone Transfer
ATCON Chairman Gbenga Adebayo has stated in interviews that telecommunication providers may soon be compelled to withdraw from USSD services because banks have refused to pay.
“The debt is rising and has not been paid by the banks. As of November 2022, the accumulated debt rose to over N80 billion. When we started the argument in 2019, it was N32 billion, and they continue to claim that they are not owing, but our investigation shows that they are still using the USSD platform to offer banking services to their customers, yet they are not remitting to telecom operators who own the USSD platform,” Adebayo said.
He claimed that since the problem cannot simply go away, it must be handled. Mobile Phone Transfer
“Time will soon come when we will be constrained to withdraw the service and many bank customers that depend on the USSD service will suffer for it and it will affect the economy. It is honourable to pay their debts and they have to pay.
“We are warning that the banks’ action in refusing to pay their debt, will have negative consequences on the CBN’s cashless economy agenda for the country. It will be a threat to the cashless economy. So, CBN should advise money deposit banks to pay up the accumulated debts.” Adebayo said.
Since 2019 there has been a dispute regarding the non-remittance of USSD fees between banks, other financial transaction platforms, and cellular carriers. In 2019, telecoms claimed they could no longer offer the services for free and suggested taking a cut of N4.50k every 20 seconds from the fees customers paid to the banks.
The banks, on the other hand, opposed it, claiming that it would result in a 450 percent cost increase.
Telecom companies announced on March 12, 2021, that they would stop offering USSD services due to banks’ N42 billion in accrued debt. However, Isa Pantami, the minister of communications and digital economy, intervened to stop the decision.
Mobile network operators (MNOs) and deposit money banks (DMBs) decided to lower the fee for clients to N6.98 for each USSD transaction at a meeting presided over by the minister on March 16, 2021. Mobile Phone Transfer
