Banks and other financial service providers use Unstructured Supplemental Data Services (USSD) to make it easier for this part of the population to access their services. However, a large part of the African population does not have access to banking services and the Internet.

Nigerian telecom companies request authorization for Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for USSD to banks and other financial institutions. Indeed, these financial groups owe 80 billion naira (180.1 million USD) to telecom operators for services rendered. The president of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) announced that the phase-out will be phased out once the initiative has been approved by the NCC. Thus, the disconnection should be done in batches, starting with the largest debtors. He thinks this could “happen around the first quarter [2023, Editor's note].”

In reality, from the disagreement between banks and telecom operators since 2019, the issue of pricing USSD services has arisen. Thus, 2021, due to the cumulative debt, which then amounted to 42 billion naira, telecom operators had already threatened to withdraw their USSD services to financial institutions starting on March 15, 2021. However, the intervention of the NCC and Banque centrale du Nigeria (CBN) the NCC made it possible to find a compromise.