A better way to buy mobile content

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 07:22

Your IT - Home IT

She added: "We could integrate with one carrier so their customer could use our gateway, but the Payforit model is more about breeding familiarity with a process and a brand so that customers who might have been burnt in the past by subscription services [paid for via premium SMS] see and trust the Payforit logo. And that is more about industry standards and rebuilding consumer trust...I would like to see the Payforit model adopted by the end of next year, but that would require all the carriers to commit to it."

Meanwhile, according to Rich, "3 is talking about using our gateway in Q1 next year; Telstra I would expect about mid next year; Vodafone has not indicated and we are about to start integrating with Optus for their adult content."

Elsewhere, Rich said: "We have our operator charging gateway installed in 24 carriers around the world. WAP billing is something that many countries are very keen on and are moving into. In Spain, Singapore and Malaysia all the carriers are offering it but we will sign up any individual carrier that wants to use it."

However a Payforit-like service would share one drawback with premium SMS: the high commission rates charged by the mobile operators, up to 50 percent, to third party content providers. This is still the situation in the UK and, Rich said, limits the types of services that can realistically be offered to those with a per transaction charge of £10 ($A22). She acknowledged that this was still one of the major barriers to greater uptake of the service.

"We would like to see the carriers reduce their share of the billing given that someone like Sybase 365 does most of the work. If there is a complaint we can rollback funds into the account. There is a reduction in costs for the carriers because they get fewer customer calls.

According to a BBC report on the launch of Payforit in the UK, "The industry hopes it will be used to pay for ringtones, train tickets, parking fees and eventually as a payment system on web shops and sites... Companies such as I-play, Gameloft, EA, Multimap, Sony Ericsson and Samsung have become the first to sign up and let people pay using the Payforit system."