If you have ever dialed a short code to borrow N100 of airtime when your balance hit zero, that option is gone. MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile have all quietly exited the airtime and data lending business. Five new companies, licensed by the FCCPC, have taken over. They work through apps, not USSD codes.
There is one genuine reason to welcome this change. But there are several reasons to be concerned.
The One Good Thing
The old system had real problems that many Nigerians experienced firsthand. Hidden charges. Deductions that nobody approved. Aggressive debt recovery over N200 worth of borrowed airtime. The new framework puts licensed lenders under proper consumer protection rules, which means they must be transparent about what they charge and how they recover money. For the first time, borrowing airtime comes with actual legal protection for the user.
That is a meaningful improvement. But it comes at a cost.
The Problems Nobody Is Talking About Loudly Enough
You need a smartphone just to borrow airtime now. The USSD shortcode system worked on any phone, including the most basic handsets. Millions of Nigerians, especially in rural areas and lower-income households, do not use smartphones. For those people, the service has not changed. It has disappeared.
You need data to borrow data. This is the painful irony at the centre of this whole shift. The new lenders operate through apps. That means when your data runs out and your airtime hits zero, you need an active internet connection to access a service that is supposed to help you when your internet runs out. The old shortcode worked precisely because it did not need any of that.
Nobody sets up an app during an emergency. Emergency airtime borrowing worked because it took about ten seconds. Downloading an app, creating an account, verifying your identity, and linking your number is not something you do when your line is dead and you have an urgent call to make. The friction is real, and it defeats the entire purpose of the service for the moments that matter most.
These five companies are unknown. MTN and Airtel had scale and accountability built over decades. The five FCCPC-approved lenders are largely unfamiliar to the average Nigerian subscriber. Trust takes time. In the gap between now and whenever that trust is earned, many people will simply go without.
The telcos kept the money but dropped the responsibility. The network operators are not completely out. The new lenders still need commercial deals with the telcos to actually deliver the airtime, which means the networks still earn their share. They stepped back from regulation while keeping their hand in the revenue. Users lost the convenience. The telcos lost nothing.
Borrowing may get more expensive. The telcos had infrastructure and scale that made small loans cheap to offer. Smaller lending companies do not have that advantage. To make the business viable, some may charge higher rates or stricter repayment terms than what Nigerians were used to. The protection that comes with regulation may be offset by terms that are simply less favourable.
The Bottom Line
Regulating airtime lending was the right idea. The execution is the problem. A system that was designed to help Nigerians in tight moments has been handed to companies most people have never heard of, locked behind apps that require the very thing you are trying to get, and made inaccessible to the millions of Nigerians who still rely on basic phones.
The structure is now cleaner. But for most people, it is also harder to use.
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