Nigerian banks are not indebted to MTN Nigeria and other telephone companies for using telecommunications platforms to provide payment services, the managing director of Access Bank Plc, Herbert Wigwe, has said.
“There is no obligation owed by banks to telecom operators,” he said, during an investor call in Lagos.
According to him, “We have chosen not to make a public statement as it is not appropriate that we find ourselves fighting with telecom operators in public.”
Wigwe heads a team of bank CEOs who have been in talks with MTN Nigeria to resolve a dispute that led some banks to cut the company off their banking platforms last week.
This was after MTN, the West African nation’s largest telecommunications service provider, slashed a commission charged on airtime purchases through banking channels by almost half to 2.5 per cent.
The action against MTN was an escalation of an ongoing dispute between lenders and telecom operators in Africa’s largest economy over fees charged on services provided on each other’s platforms. Telecom operators through their umbrella union, the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, threatened last month to disconnect banks from providing payment services on telecom platforms until they are paying off a debt of N42 billion ($103 million) allegedly owed to its members by the end user billing.
The threat was quashed after the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy intervened in the dispute leading to an agreement to charge a fixed amount and also settle any debt for past services.
