The battle for the soul of retail banking and the deepening of financial inclusion is indeed in top gear. It is also obvious that the special purpose vehicle for driving this quest is technological innovations, particularly the ones available in mobile phones. Why?

Mobile phones have become one of the most common items that the rich and poor, big and small, men and women, educated and unlettered are seen with theses days. In fact, the youths that drive the social media have acquired mobile phones in variants. These are the targets of the retail banking and financial inclusion.

The latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research showed that about one billion people globally, representing one in seven people on earth, have used their phones to perform at least one banking transaction as at the end of 2015.

The research authority projects this figure to grow to two billion in the next four years (2020), representing 37 per cent of the global adult population.But there seems to be a game changer in the offing. It is the innovative offering of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), which presently is being tapped by few financial institutions in Nigeria to deepen retail banking and financial inclusion.

As Internet penetration continues to make huge inroads in Africa, the use of mobile phones as the new and preferred banking channel is shaping up rapidly and expected to take centre-stage sooner.

Granted, almost all banks in the leading economies on the continent have launched mobile apps that enable myriads of transactions like bills payment, funds transfers, travel bookings and lots more.In Nigeria, banks are now taking it a bit further and have introduced USSD banking to ensure that the masses, especially those that do not have smart phones are not left perpetually financially excluded. USSD is a Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication technology used to send texts messages between a mobile phone and an application programme in the owner network.

Among the banks in the USSD initiative, Zenith Bank Plc and presently, Nigeria’s most profitable bank and a Tier 1 financial institution, has emerged a major promoter of this channel. It is now asserting that its *966# USSD banking solution will help drive the nation’s financial integration programme being championed by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The bank’s USSD banking solution also tagged: “Easy Way to Bank”, embodies every word in that statement by enabling people perform financial transactions on all known mobile phones, without having to go on the Internet or mobile app.

According to the bank, to open a Zenith Bank account now, people only need to dial *966*0# and follow the prompts and account number will automatically be generated for the customer to start running the account after a short visit to any of the bank’s branches.

To perform transactions with the solution, the bank’s customers are required to perform a one-time registration by dialing *966*00# and following the prompts. After registering, customers can easily carry out myriad of banking activities anytime.With the USSD, almost every aspect of banking can now be done by the phone: For balance enquiries, *966*00#; airtime purchase, *966*amount*Mobile Number#; funds transfer, *966*amount*Beneficiary Account Number#.

These transactions can only be performed from the phone number registered against a customer’s account with Zenith Bank and require a four-digit PIN for transaction authentication.The bank assured that the eazybanking scheme is a convenient, fast, secure, and affordable way to access bank account 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the mobile phone without Internet connectivity.

It is a session-oriented service, unlike SMS, which is a store and forward based service. It is available to all individual account holders with any phone that runs on the GSM platform, except the bank’s ZECA and Premium account holders.The uniqueness of the technological innovation that is different those of SMS, General Pocket Radio Service (GPRS) and application based services; provides an interactive browsing experience; available on all GSM handsets; has an in-built USSD encryption for performing secure transactions; and faster service, as network latency is low.

Eazybanking is also safe as it has different levels of authorisation that ensures banking transactions and information remain private, while it requires verification using Debit card (MasterCard, Visa and Verve)- PAN and PIN to authorize transaction, as well as BVN.Though keying into the scheme is open for all Zenith Bank’s customers, it is generally targeted at low-income earners with non- feature phones.

However, limits on mobile banking transactions with the initiative has been put at a cumulative transfer of N100,000 daily; cumulative transaction limit on airtime top-up of N3,000 daily.For security reasons, when one dials *966*00# for balance enquiry for the first time through the mobile number used in opening the account,
the prompt will ask for registeration by entering the last four digits of the customers Debit Card (MasterCard or Visa) or BVN and then the account balance will show.

After dialing *966*amount*account number# for a transfer, it will ask the customer to select beneficiary bank and a confirmation page will be displayed showing beneficiary name, bank and the amount.

It is then the customer will be prompted to enter your four-digit PIN and if the transaction is successful, it will display “You have successfully transferred ‘amount’ to ‘beneficiary account number’. The new balance is ‘amount’”.

Indeed, the USSD initiative, as a new strategy to offer wide range of banking services, which were only possible through Internet and smartphones, is a development in the right direction. With increasing knowledge and awareness on this new innovation, it will raise the level of retail banking and ultimately, financial inclusion rate.