What's the latest on taking micropayments using mobile phones...?

We're toying with the idea of a pay-per-page-view payment mechanism. The amount would be less than £5 - perhaps around £2 - and, given the level of spend, credit card isn't really an option from both a user and commercial point of view.

There's BT Click & Buy, of course, as well a range of e-wallet type offerings but they still all require some kind of account setting up.

I was wondering whether premium SMS or IVR technology could be used to do this sensibly? And if so, who does it, how much etc... Guess it's tricky (impossible?) for pay as you go mobile users?

I was imagining a mechanism whereby users could text a shortcode and we could text them back an access code. Is this in the world of the feasible/sensible? I heard about it being done a while back but most of those companies seem to have disappeared...(iobox and the like)

Any pointers welcome.

Thanks

Ashley

I believe one of the problems you may come across is the new e-money legislation. This states that services that are paid for using pre pay mobiles must be used on the mobile device (ie. sms or wap content).

Until this legislation is sorted out (which the mobile ops are lobbying for), the application will breach the legislation if you offer it to all users (ie. pre pay + contract).

Apart from this I think it's a great idea. I'd much rather be billed a small amount to my mobile bill than get my credit card out to view website content.

Phil

On 11:41:23 9 July 2003 TallTroll wrote:
>Oof, I wasn't aware of that legislation. It makes sense to
>protect prepay users, I suppose, but its a bit short
>sighted in many ways, isn't it?
>
>Hmm, I suppose you might be able to get around it by
>texting a WAP page to the phone with the required content,
>but that only works for relatively small packages
>
>I hunted down some figures, and it seems that in the
>European market at least, prepaid subscribers make up
>between 50% - 85%+ (Italy at a whopping 88.7% in Sept
>'01!) of the user base. Is that still more or less the
>case today? Or have the mobile operators had some success
>in switching users to contract services?

In mine and many others opinion it's very short sighted. If you have old copys of New Media Age knocking around have a look at the front page of the March 6th issue. I think 160charachters.org also has furher info on the issue.

I'm not sure what the exact percentages for prepaid / contract users is in the UK but in some areas (such as the youth market) it would be very significant. If your app was aimed at a business user it would probably be less significant.

One operator advised us we could get around the legislation in various ways. If you'd like to discuss these give me a call.

Phil
Tel : 07742 235983

Click & Buy and Ymogen are mediation services, offering specific advantages over traditional SMS. They allow users to purchase content while having charges settled to a specific payment method of their choice. BT supports some cards (Visa Mastercard), direct debit and the blue bill, Ymogen supports payments via mobile and all card (visa, mastercard, switch, solo, meastro, jcb), (i should point out that neither supports AMEX).

The benefits of a mediation service over a normal SMS content service are:
Your customers register once and then all future purchases are point and click. Registration with Ymogen takes the same amount of time as a single SMS purchase using a keyword.

They support single sign-on across all affiliate sites.

There is no software to install for you our your clients.

Account management services are available for both consumers and merchants. Ymogen has an online demo at http://demo.ymogen.com

I hope this helps
Mark Hardwick
Ymogen.