Mobile Entertainment

IN THE first issue of ME, in March 2005, we interviewed Simpay, the company created to develop a cross-operator WAP billing platform in the UK. Within three months it was dead, hobbled by operator anxiety. Although Simpay died, the idea behind it didn’t. Late in 2005, the similar PayForIt concept was born. This month, the five UK operators will mandate that all WAP ‘click-to-buy’ billing must use the PayForIt scheme, thus replacing the use of premium SMS billing.

In its unheralded way, this is a significant moment for the UK content biz. PayForIt will bring a uniform off-deck payment experience for consumers regardless of the site they are purchasing from – or the network they’re with. Anil Malhotra, SVP of marketing and alliances at Bango, sums it up.

“PayForIt makes a mobile purchase look and feel like a web purchase. It will also bring the harvesting and spamming practices under control and provide transparency as to who the content provider is,” he says.

The consumer experience of PayForIt is as follows:
* The consumer visits a WAP site, selects a product and clicks ‘buy’.
* Consumer is then transferred to a PayForIt WAP payment page hosted by an approved provider.
* The PayForIt WAP page displays the content description, price and links to terms and conditions.
* Consumer authorises payment by clicking ‘pay now’.
* Provider processes the payment with the operator.
* Consumer is presented with a transaction outcome page.

The system should boost confidence, and hasten the demise of reverse-billed SMS as a billing mechanism, which is famously clunky and still the subject of suspicion among end-users.

Malhotra adds: “SMS billing for customers who have not seen the price and terms of a product but explicitly said ‘I’ll buy that’ will diminish rapidly. PSMS works well for TV response services, but elsewhere it will fade away.”

Renaud Ménérat, marketing director of Netsize, is more specific, predicting WAP billing will surpass PSMS in two-to-three years. “In France WAP billing represents 20 per cent of mobile payments but is growing at up to 60 per cent a year, against 15 per cent for PSMS,” he says. Ménérat believes the primary role of shortcodes will be to access a mobile store and act as a channel for CRM. “A little like the complementary relationship between websites and email on the web,” he explains.

Although there will be a set-up cost for PayForIt (Ménérat reckons around £5,000 a year across all operators and price points), this will in theory be offset by savings on shortcodes, where one code is currently required per price point.

Meanwhile, other countries around Europe are watching the roll-out of PayForIt and comparing it with alternative approaches. In France (with Gallery), Portugal (Dimo) and Belgium (PlazZza), the set-up is a common WAP portal accessible via every operator. Furthermore, in the US the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has provided the content industry with a standardised model for off-deck WAP services on any carrier network.