Billing on Mobile

Premium SMS has been gradually replaced by a WAP billing experience for mobile content purchases says Bango, which processed its 4 millionth Payforit transaction in August 2008. With many of the UK’s largest mobile content providers - including The Sun, Gameloft and Sony BMG - using Bango to provide Payforit mobile billing, this migration was further accelerated when Vodafone joined O2 and T-Mobile in mandating Payforit compliance for mobile web content sales.

WAP billing has become popular because it delivers a more transparent payment experience. Customers can see the price and conditions of purchase before they click to pay.  And, because users choose to buy content and then pay in one seamless internet session, there is little room for error as compared to the two-step Premium SMS process.

The improved consumer experience delivered by WAP billing brings the benefit of  significantly lower customer care costs with refund levels of less than 0.1%, compared to levels approaching 10-20% where content is purchased with Premium SMS (source: industry research firm iGillot).

Bango’s analysis of mobile billing on the mobile internet in the UK shows:

• 92% of transactions were successfully completed through the company’s Payforit flow, and at levels exceeding previous types of transactions.
• 1% error rate – incomplete transactions resulting from a payment processing failure, often leading to a retry.
• 7% of transactions failed because users had insufficient funds to complete their purchase.

As part of its research, Bango also calculated the average transaction speed, a key metric for improved customer experience. This is worked out as the time elapsed between the user clicking the “Buy” link and seeing the confirmation web page. Across all five networks the average is five seconds and in the best cases an average of two seconds is achieved.

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