In response to my previous blog '5 Common Challenges in Testing a Mobile Money Transfer Solution', I received several emails about challenges and hurdles that others have encountered while performing testing of their mobile money transfer solutions.  Thanks to all that took the time to share their experience!  Below are 2 additional recurring themes that came out of the responses that I received.  These may prove helpful to those of you who are in the heat of delivery.  The first one builds upon one of my previous items, but it further illustrates the particular challenge in such a tricky integration effort.

 1)  Integration with the MNO - Many MNO's don't allow special characters in the USSD response message, and the error messages one might receive aren't necessarily indicative of this.  For example, when the system requests an address or a recipient name, the user may enter a special character such as an apostrophe.  

2) Handset limitations - It is a rare case, but some handsets may not support USSD.  It is imperative to understand the full gamut of handsets in use by the set of users, and to understand their limitations.  Another example of handset limitations may be in the support of SSL communication.  This was another issue that was encountered by a respondent 

 I hope that this overview has proven useful to those of you actively working on implementations, and I wish you the best of luck.  I welcome you to reach out to me directly with any questions or commentary, and would be interested in hearing more of your experiences.  Cheers.

 

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Name: Anant Tailor Title: Mobile Financial Services Delivery Lead Company: DonRiver Inc. View Anant Tailor's Blog