Leading telecommunication giant, MTN Ghana, has warned that vendors, who charge customers a fee when they sell MTN airtime to them through the Electrical Virtual Distribution (EVD) system otherwise known as credit transfer, will be sanctioned.

MTN has reduced the amount of physical recharge cards on the market as part of efforts to go largely digital.
This has compelled more people to rely on mobile money and Electronic Virtual Distribution commonly known as credit transfer to purchase airtime.

As at the end of 2020, MTN physical recharge cards made up only 5 percent of the recharge options made available by the telecoms company to the general public.

Although the telecoms giant has encouraged vendors and the general public to explore its other options for accessing airtime, checks by Citi Business News show that some vendors charge as much as fifteen percent of the amount of credit a customer purchases through the EVD.

But according to MTN, vendors already make their profit from the transfer and are not expected to charge any extra amount for the transfer.

In an interview with Citi Business News, the General Manager for Regional Sales in the Southern sector, Abubakar Mohammed, cautioned vendors who charge extra money from EVD transfers to desist from that or face the appropriate be sanctions.

“An EVD agent is not supposed to charge a customer any fee. Their margins are incorporated in the airtime they purchase from MTN which is granted them 5% already. So they are not supposed to charge the customer who is buying airtime from them any fee. When a customer buys an EVD of GHS1.00, he is expected to receive the same value. Any value that the customer pays is supposed to receive the same value as their airtime and the customer should insist on ensuring that he gets the same value for what he pays for.”

“If a customer feels that he’s been cheated, we have created avenues that he can report the vendor. Either you call the 100 short code and complain, or you can visit any of our MTN service centers and report the vendor. And we will take appropriate action. Some of the actions that we take is to engage the vendor to desist from that, and to even block the vendor from performing any business on EVD. So we are protecting the customer and ensuring that they get value for what they buy.”