Today we’ve announced that we’ve increased our pay-out rates to help drive the adoption of mobile billing.
With online transactions charged to the mobile set to increase exponentially in the next few years, we’ve also announced that we’re launching a range of significant upgrades to our mobile billing solution as part of our new Charge to Mobile service available later this year. These changes will support higher price points and provide merchants with the ability to provide refunds and credits to our consumer customers.
Whether buying digital services from a website, mobile site or within an application, mobile billing enables the customer to simply charge the payment to their mobile phone bill or prepaid credit. There is no requirement to register in order to use mobile billing – it is automatically available to all our consumer customers. The new higher pay-out rates announced today enables merchants to offer consumers a wider range of services payable to their mobile.
“This is a market where the key pieces of the jigsaw are starting to come together. Firstly, where mobile billing has been supported as an additional payment option, we have recently seen examples of merchant revenue increasing by over 200 per cent,” said Danny Barclay, Head of Interactive at O2 Media.
“We foresee further examples of this type of increase, particularly as Internet usage through the mobile phone becomes more prevalent and we expect more and more merchants to take advantage of mobile billing in order to commercialise their goods and services.
“Secondly, when O2 customers are provided with mobile billing as a payment option for online micro transactions, it immediately becomes a popular payment option. Finally, the recent O2 announcement that Google, Facebook and Microsoft will be implementing mobile billing is evidence that this view is shared by large merchants who are coming onto the service.”
Our Charge to Mobile payment solution due later this year will provide a number of key benefits:
• Any merchant signing up with us via one of our accredited partners will be able to offer a ‘Charge to Mobile’ payment option for our consumer customers, in order to capture payment from those without other method of payment.
• Merchants connected to the platform will be provided with a simple, low-friction means of charging our consumers via their mobile phone bill, for transactions they undertake through any Internet-connected device. Unlike card-funded payment solutions, there is no requirement for our customers to register for this service. This payment mechanism will automatically be available to all our consumer customers upon launch. It’s the perfect mechanism for acquiring new, paying customers – particularly via a mobile Internet session or within an application.
• The platform will enable an increased range and flexibility of pricing for merchants. It will also enable merchants to issue refunds to the mobile bill and to credit users.
• Integration is straight forward through standard API’s, and by connecting into the platform via one of our accredited payment intermediaries, merchants can also access similar capabilities to charge consumers on other UK mobile networks.
Mobile billing is supported on all of the main UK mobile networks, with a common framework called ‘Payforit’ used to make it simple for merchants to incorporate mobile billing as a payment mechanism, and in order to give the customer a standardised, secure and trusted purchase experience across all merchant sites.
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