It is surprising that barely one week after Access bank announced that it will pay the accrued stamp duty charges as instructed by the Central Bank of Nigeria to refund all affected customers the equivalent amounts deducted from the irrespective bank accounts, the bank has devised a way to take out their pound of flesh on its USSD customers.
At the sight of canopies in some Access bank branches, one will be faced with a crowd shouting and pushing their way through just to gain entry into the banking hall. This further explains the frustration most customers are subjected to before having access to their funds, not to mention the dangers of being exposed to the coronavirus infection.
The information gathered by Radarr.Africa from some of the customers present at the premises of the banking hall was that for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data(USSD) which allows users without internet enabled-phone to use banking services, has a limit of N200,000 as the maximum daily transaction.
It is worth noting that Diamond bank customers cannot transfer N200,000 at once but will have to perform the transfer in multiples of N20,000 each to reach the daily transfer limit which attracts N52 on every 20,000 transfer as the service charge.
While at the scene some old Diamond Bank users who are now Access bank customers lamented that the merging of the two banks have subjected them to getting stung by Access bank baseless bank charges which include SMS alert charges, account maintenance fees to accumulated stamp duty charges and others, all thanks to the intervention of CBN.
An old Diamond bank user who remained anonymous said he uses USSD for all his transfer, but had to come to the banking hall in order to transfer N350,000 rent from his account which could have been done at the comfort of his home, says he regrets not saving the funds in his other bank account.
Others claimed that the bank wants to recover the N1 billion Relief Fund donated towards the fight against Coronavirus from its customers.
Though there are numerous charges by banks to their customers, lately Access bank has had increasing complaints from most of its customers and it is hard to explain why all of these is happening only in the bank and not with other banks in Nigeria.
