Lender is 'smiling to the bank' with N1 trillion in USSD service transactions

The USSD craze by all the banks in the country looks like its been justified with Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) announcing on Friday that it has recorded over N1 trillion worth of transactions via its #737 platform.

Everybody has gotten that “Just dial star blah blah blah hash” message from their banks at some point and, while some of them do not work well (Zenith’s for example), it’s made banking services a lot more accessible to people with/without smartphones and fancy apps.

GTB CEO, Segun Agbaje, made the milestone announcement at the company’s AGM on Friday, according to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek. He said the bank acquired 3 million users who carried N1 trillion in transactions within a year, citing the service’s ubiquitousness and “global acceptance” as driving factors.

ALSO READ: GTBank's Segun Agbaje speaks on "The Future of Banking in the Age of Social"

How adoption of the USSD-based service translates into GTB’s overall performance is up for review but the bank did record a 19.7 percent growth in total assets with over N509 billion in shareholders funds for the fiscal year under review.

Obviously, USSD-based banking services deserve strong consideration from any bank (as GTB’s numbers prove), but it’d be interesting to see how USSD-based services have affected the banking, fintech and payments markets within the last year. Great? Smokescreen? Share your thoughts via the poll below.