Nigeria’s two most powerful tech-and-money regulators—the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)—have built a unified framework to finally tackle a stubborn pain point: customers getting debited for airtime or data top-ups that never arrive. Announced at the NCC’s 94th Telecom Consumer Parliament, the new rulebook introduces standard service levels and an industry-wide response code system designed to pinpoint exactly where a transaction fails—and who must fix it.
The goal is simple, said the CBN’s Director of Consumer Protection and Inclusion, Dr. Aisha Olatinwo: the consumer must get value for what they paid for. The framework is undergoing final review before public release, but regulators say the direction is set: fewer excuses, faster reversals, and clear penalties when banks, switches, or mobile networks drop the ball.
Why this matters: failed airtime/data purchases have been among the top consumer complaints in Nigeria’s telecom sector for years. The typical saga—instant debit, no credit, days of limbo—has eroded trust in digital channels and undercut financial inclusion, particularly for users who rely on USSD. Compounding the frustration: a ₦6.98 USSD session fee that can be charged even when the underlying transaction collapses.
What’s new in the framework
- Unified response codes: Every electronic airtime/data transaction will carry standardized outcome codes. That creates a clean audit trail so regulators and operators can see, at a glance, whether the failure sat with the issuing bank, payment switch, or MNO—and sanction accordingly.
- Mandatory SLAs across the stack: Banks, processors, and MNOs will operate under non-negotiable timelines for reversals and dispute resolution. While the final airtime/data timings are pending, officials indicate alignment with existing CBN precedents (e.g., instant/24 hours for on-us reversals, 48 hours for not-on-us, 72 hours for PoS/web disputes). Translation: no more week-long waits for tiny airtime refunds.
- Joint task force for execution: A dedicated CBN–NCC team will oversee rollout, enforcement, and continuous improvement—closing the gaps that let participants pass blame without fixing root causes.
Context: a long-running bank–telco standoff
The industry’s USSD “who-pays-whom” fight left billions of naira disputed for years. A 2025 fix—the End-User Billing (EUB) model—moved the ₦6.98 USSD fee to direct airtime deductions. But EUB didn’t settle who refunds whom when a bank-side or switch-side glitch kills a transaction after the fee is charged. The new framework is meant to end that ambiguity with a single chain of accountability.
The NCC, meanwhile, is widening its Quality of Service lens beyond MNOs to include tower co-location providers, tying power and site security to overall network reliability—and, by extension, transaction success rates. It’s a signal that uptime and financial integrity are now inseparable metrics in Nigeria’s digital economy.
The bottom line
This is less a feature tweak and more a regulatory peace treaty for a fragmented value chain. If implemented with real teeth, the CBN–NCC framework replaces opaque error codes and manual complaint mazes with automated accountability: clear failure signals, fast reversals, and penalties that bite. For consumers navigating a cash-light world—topping up data to bank, and banking to buy data—that trust loop is everything.
