USSD is Ussed for…
I continue to write about USSD services… So, there can be:
- Various information services: weather, sports, breaking news, traffic, geo-location services, directory services etc.
- Entertainment services: melodies, pictures, games, horoscopes, dating, etc.
- Financial services
Nikhil Pahwa reports:
Barclays Bank has launched Mobile Banking, called “Hello Money”, entirely on the USSD platform, so it doesn’t require GPRS and SMS. I’m not a Barclays customer (though their representatives do call me quite often), but I did give the service a go by dialing *598*#. The service is available in Hindi and English, but there’s a problem -- they’re charging customers Rs. 30 per month, and it is available only on Airtel, Voda and Idea networks.
Wikipedia reports that USSD is the base of some payment methods such as SharEpay in South Africa, Mobipay in Spain, Paysa in India & mPay in Poland.
Mobile Marketing
Voting, quizzes, interactive mass-marketing campaigns, promotional games. USSD service codes can be advertised on any medium: classifieds, corporate gifts, business cards, product packaging, billboards, etc.
Services for Roamers
Travel information, tourist guides, local news, useful numbers, location-based weather, news, etc. Subscribers can access emails (send and receive) from anywhere in the world.
Operator’s Portal
In Russia portals are usually located at *111# (MTS, Beeline).
Location based services
SIM based applications