There’s nothing new about mobile phone subscribers being able to pay for goods and services from their mobile phones. But the mobile payment experience is often far from ideal – representing a barrier to doing business with a merchant.
But with Direct Operator Billing things are about to change…meaning that operators can rapidly build new merchant relationships and high volume, secure mCommerce channels.
The mobile payment opportunity is great. Smart Mobile devices are becoming pervasive – across all demographic groups. Moreover, in many developing economies mobile payment represents a significant opportunity to create new platforms for secure monetary transactions.
At SLA Mobile, we believe the mobile payment potential is still largely untapped – because we believe that the future of mobile payment embraces the most obvious means of exchange with a secure and trusted party – the mobile phone service provider. And we’re working with operators to allow them to build richer, revenue-generating opportunities with their own customers.
Direct Operator Billing – for goods and services via the subscriber’s own mobile bill – is still in its infancy. But many believe (and we agree with them) it’s an idea whose time has come.
Until recently the only services consumed by subscribers that were billed directly to the mobile phone bill were ring tones or wallpapers – with payment via Premium SMS. Direct Operator Billing, however, allows a myriad of goods and services to be billed directly to the mobile subscriber’s bill. With the emergence of near-field communications functionality and QR code readers on mobile devices traditional high street goods and services can also be purchased in this way – safely, securely and with vastly better customer, operator and merchant related business processes.
This is part of a briefing paper we have prepared on Direct Operator Billing. To get a copy of the full paper, click here.