Currently the main way of paying for 3rd party services is via Premium SMS. Typically the developer gets about 60% and the network operator keeps 40%. The payment, and that for any of the network operators’ own information services, ends up on the customer’s bill.

Sharewire is an innovative service that accepts Paypal, Interactive Voice Response (premium rate numbers) and premium SMS Billing. The latter is particularly compelling as it’s difficult and costly for the developer to set up this kind of payment across many countries as it involves agreements, setup and monthly payments, with many network operators.

I recently came across Ericsson IPX. They provide payment by premium rate SMS, WAP, MMS and the web. Again, they have worked out all the details of working with the network operators in many countries and allow content to be sold with a simple single signup. IPX current works in the UK, Germany, USA, Taiwan, Singapore, Spain, Norway, Thailand, Finland, Sweden, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Estonia, Mexico and Denmark.

US based shortcode billing is also becoming more easily available with both Clickatell and Wireless Media providing convenient single-stop access shortcodes for most of the US carriers

Network operators are not encouraging outside payment services, preferring service providers to use existing network operator billing or premium sms both for which they get a large revenue share. Network operators are also tending to be cautious about 3rd party service costs added to the user’s bill as they are aware that additional services may bloat bills dissuading continued use or normal voice use. Also, to prevent fraud, some network operators have (unofficial) limits on the total monthly bill which complicates matters.

Network operators rarely encourage or cooperate with new 3rd party payment systems. Simpay failed. Mobipay, the Mobile Electronic Transactions (formed by Ericsson, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Siemens and Sony Ericsson) and MobeyForum (formed by some major banks) have, to date, been largely ineffective.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Payment, Mobile, Network Operators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.