Billing on Mobile

Yet more bandages are being applied to Premium SMS based subscription services with the new rules introduced today by UK regulator PhonepayPlus.

The rules (detailed in Regulation of Mobile Phone-paid Services and their Marketing) aim to curb the abuses with subscription services where Premium SMS is the billing method. 

This will protect consumers from rises in bad practice by mobile content providers who consistently fail to adopt industry best practice.

I’m pleased to say that these new measures don’t apply to Payforit compliant services. Payforit is a mobile web payment flow endorsed by all the UK operators with pricing transparency and clear opt-in, opt-out regulations that prevent the sort of abuses that are still rife in Premium SMS based services.

The new rules say “as part of the prior permission undertaking, any consumer joining a subscription service must first receive a free confirmation text message detailing the cost and conditions of the service.”

The PhonepayPlus document says: “The requirement will not extend to services which use Payforit, whatever the cost, on the grounds that Payforit already provides a method of consumer confirmation.” 

PhonepayPlus received more than 8,000 mobile related complaints in 2007/8, a 108% increase on the previous year. This upward trend continued into 2008. Each month they receive close to 2,000 complaints relating to mobile content services. In 2008 54 mobile phone-paid services were fined in excess of £1.2 million.

It’s good that PhonepayPlus has brought in these strong measures – they not only protect consumers but prevent those of us who are working hard to adopt industry best practise through Payforit from being brought down by less scrupulous businesses.

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