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Regional USSD

See our USSD User Guide for details about using this messaging channel.

Not available on Connect Lite.

The USSD gateway offered by Clickatell provides a simple, reliable, and secure experience for medium and large enterprises to provide support and deliver interactive engagement to their users in South Africa and Nigeria via the USSD channel.

Clickatell acts as an aggregator and provides enterprise clients with API access to Clickatell’s managed USSD gateway. Enterprise clients can in turn offer USSD-based services to their customers. Clickatell is responsible for managing the connection to all mobile network operators.

Clickatell offers two types of USSD products:

  • Mobile-initiated (MI): Also known as USSD Pull, the USSD session on the handset is initiated by the end-user.

  • Network-initiated (NI): Also known as USSD Push or Mobile Terminating USSD, the USSD session on the handset is started by the application. Different handsets handle the notification differently, but most handsets will beep and display the text sent to it by the application. This information could be presented as a menu to which the user can respond. USSD Push can be used for applications such as subscriber surveys, payment verification, and even marketing messages. (Available in selected territories and networks.)

Clickatell’s USSD gateway can be integrated with additional Clickatell services, enabling non-technical staff to design the rich automated experiences and transactional activities your customers crave and demand. With Chat Flow, you can visually create, edit, and manage your customer communications and business process workflows across multiple channels (e.g., SMS, USSD, WhatsApp). Furthermore, with our Transactional APIs, enterprises can enable their customers to purchase prepaid mobile, data, electricity, and even make donations.

✨ Benefits of Clickatell’s USSD offering:

  • Hosted solution significantly reducing the capital requirements and the need for in-house mobile technical skills.

  • Attractive volume-based per session tapered pricing.

  • Single point of contact for billing, technical, and operational areas.

  • A single secure access point across all networks (selected countries) and services.

  • Quality of service across the USSD value chain through active monitoring of USSD systems and carrier/client connections.

  • An enterprise-grade experience through a fully managed USSD connectivity service and enterprise-level support.

  • Reporting and analytics.

  • Ability to blacklist mobile numbers if not already blacklisted by the network operator.

  • Service code management.

  • Access to a subject matter expert.

  • Works on all GSM devices including feature phones.

  • USSD usage can be reverse-billed to the institution.