End of Failed Airtime/Data Debits: NCC and CBN Unveil New 30-Second Refund Framework

 In a major breakthrough for consumer rights, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have finalized a unified framework to end the era of "lost money" during failed airtime and data transactions.

The new policy, set to take full effect on March 1, 2026, ensures that subscribers who are debited for unsuccessful top-ups receive an automatic refund within seconds.

The hallmark of this framework is the strict timeline for financial restitution. Under the new Service Level Agreement (SLA) includes Instant Refunds, If a subscriber is debited but fails to receive value, they are entitled to a refund within 30 seconds; In cases where a system glitch causes a transaction to hang, the resolution must be completed within 24 hours and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are now mandated to send an SMS notification for the success or failure of every attempt.

During the pilot phase and preliminary stakeholder engagements, the NCC revealed that a staggering ₦10 billion has already been refunded to Nigerian customers by banks and telcos.

Mrs. Freda Bruce-Bennett, Director of Consumer Affairs at the NCC, noted that failed top-ups currently rank as one of the top three complaints in the industry.

"We were determined to resolve this priority issue. This framework identifies and tackles root causes, including instances where bank accounts are debited without delivery of serviced ."Mrs. Freda Bruce-Bennett.

The Central Dashboard is to ensure that banks and telcos do not ignore these new rules, the NCC and CBN will jointly host a Central Monitoring Dashboard. This tech-driven platform will monitor transaction failures in real-time.

It identify whether the glitch occurred at the bank or the telco level.

Track SLA breaches and enforce penalties where refunds are delayed.