The Central Bank of Nigeria has released a regulatory framework for the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). With most banks in the country now using USSD codes for banking transactions, the regulatory framework is to ensure that the vulnerabilities in the technology world does out customers fund at risk.
In the proposed framework, USSD based financial transactions will require an end-to-end encryption to protect the integrity of the financial information. To this end, all USSD-based financial services shall put in place a proper message authentication mechanism to validate that requests/ responses are generated through authenticated users.
The Apex Bank instructs that mobile money operators are eligible for the issuance of short codes after meeting the necessary requirements of the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) for the issuance of the codes.
Financial institutions are required to treat and solve any customer related issues regarding these transactions within 48 hours, and the CBN warns that failure to do so will attract sanctions.
