What is going on with USSD charges in Nigeria?

God bless USSD. 

The Editor-in-Chief at Stears Business, Tokunbo, often talks about how straightforward USSD transactions are. The platform is simple, and it is reliable. 

It does not suffer from the same bottlenecks that other transfer channels do. It does not get buggy like the banking apps or have frequent network issues like the point-of-sale (POS) machines. 

Unlike banking apps that run on our regular data or wifi networks, USSD transactions run directly on the GSM infrastructure of telcos such as MTN, Airtel or Glo. Naturally, the telcos want to be compensated for the cost of offering this service to the banks' customers.

Last week, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced that USSD sessions will now cost customers ₦6.98 per transaction. But that was not the biggest news. The big news was that customers would now be paying for this service through their