Following its disagreement with some Nigerian banks, MTN has announced alternative recharge options for its customers.
The telco said on Saturday that customers can now recharge airtime through payment solutions platforms such as Flutterwave, Jumia Pay, OPay, Kuda, Carbon and BillsnPay.
MTN, in a statement endorsed by its Senior Manager, External Relations, Funso Aina, said customers could recharge airtime by dialing *904# and *606#.
The statement reads: “It will interest you to note that for the benefit of our customers who have been greatly inconvenienced by the service suspension, we now have alternative channels of accessing MTN services electronically”.
The development is coming barely 24 hours after commercial banks on Friday disconnected MTN customers from banking channels including the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data and banking apps, leaving millions of MTN subscribers frustrated as they were unable to recharge airtime via USSD amid the Easter celebrations.
MTN currently have about 77 million subscribers, making up about 45 per cent of the total telecommunications market share in Nigeria.
Problems started when MTN reportedly reduced the banks’ commission from an average of 3.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent.
The banks had written MTN to revert to the old commission, otherwise, they would block MTN airtime in all their channels.
The banks, except Zenith Bank which was connected directly to MTN, subsequently blocked MTN from their banking channels, leaving customers stranded as they were unable to recharge virtually.
