Bango has announced a mass switch-on of over 1,000 mobile Internet sites to comply with the new UK Payforit billing rules which become mandatory from 1 September. To help businesses that need to make their services Payforit compliant, Bango has today launched Bango Focus UK. This new product helps businesses move fast to ensure they can still charge for content through WAP billing once the deadline is reached, in just eight weeks time.
Payforit is a UK-wide initiative backed by all five network operators to provide a safer consumer experience, where users only pay for content they want and that will work on their phones. It mandates a WAP-based payment flow for off-portal content, similar in nature to the payment process Bango has operated for over five years.
The introduction of Payforit marks a step change for the mobile content industry, from using Premium SMS for payment to a more reliable WAP-based scheme,” says Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango. Businesses will move to WAP billing to deliver a better consumer experience for their services and benefit from significantly lower customer care costs.”
Bango technology means there is no additional cost to content providers and no changes to their mobile sites needed to obtain Payforit compliance.
Some SMS aggregators require customers to re-integrate or re-develop their sites to comply with the latest Payforit specification,” adds Malhotra. This slows time to market, losing revenues and increasing cost and risk.”
Bango says that Bango Focus UK delivers a cost-effective, high payout solution for content businesses of all sizes needing to comply with the Payforit scheme. It incorporates the latest Payforit v1.2 scheme rules which, for example, enable content providers to brand the Payforit pages. Consistent use of branding within a payment flow is critical for building consumer confidence during a transaction, says Bango.
The company adds that with more businesses launching a mobile web presence, Bango makes it easy for them to drive traffic to a mobile website, understand who the visitors are, track marketing campaigns and collect payment for digital content world-wide. 
