My experience at using UBA's USSD based airtime top up service

Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday September 21, 2016 at 15:18:31:

You can now reload your airtime balance by simply dialing *919*Amount# if you have a UBA account.

I recently visited a UBA branch where I had an account. It's one of the oldest bank accounts that I have because the bank is also old like Union bank and First bank. UBA is one of those old banks in Nigeria which has survived for more than 20 years. The bank has always been there as far as I can remember even when I was in primary school and so it was natural that I had an existing account there.

Even though I've been using the USSD based platform of other banks to recharge my GSM number, I've never used that of UBA because I didn't know about it and it's probably because they don't advertise it as much as other banks do. Well, I saw the banner on their door when I was using their ATM and tried it today and it was actually working well.

All I did to reload airtime credit to my phone was dialing the code *919*500# and an airtime credit of N500 was added to my airtime credit for my network. It really works and there are no other questions asked such as your card number or date of birth as some bank's normally do.

Many banks in Nigeria now offer their customers the ability to recharge their GSM credit with their phones using the USSD platform and believe me it is much easier than buying a recharge card or buying airtime online. Just dial the code and it will be topped up. I have to say that some banks are not doing a good service at it unlike UBA because some of them will tell you to first register while others will ask for your card number. Some have totally abandoned their service altogether while some have changed their topup codes without adequately informing their customers and so I've stopped using them. With this experience I had with UBA, I think I'm stuck.