O2 has increased its pay-out rates to merchants, in an attempt to help drive the adoption of mobile billing.
Its part of a wider range of significant upgrades to its mobile billing solution, ahead of the launch of the Charge to Mobile service later this year. Merchants integrating the Charge to Mobile APIs will be able to debit, credit or issue refunds directly to customers mobile bills.
“This is a market where the key pieces of the jigsaw are starting to come together. Firstly, where mobile billing has been supported as an additional payment option, we have recently seen examples of merchant revenue increasing by over 200 per cent,” said Danny Barclay, head of interactive at O2 Media. “We foresee further examples of this type of increase, particularly as internet usage through the mobile phone becomes more prevalent, and we expect more and more merchants to take advantage of mobile billing in order to commercialise their goods and services.”
Ray Anderson, CEO of mobile billing company Bango, believes this could be a hugely influential move by Telefónica, which is consistently helping push mobile innovation into the mainstream.
“Until recently, the costs of operator billing have been just a little too high for a low-margin business like selling music,” says Anderson. “Well wait to see what the numbers look like, but with O2 driving costs down we may soon reach a tipping point where selling music through operator billing is commercially viable for the big online music retailers, and well see huge increases in sales volumes.
“This small change from O2 could make a massive difference, particularly when you consider that operator billing is mandatory to reach demographic groups without credit cards, which includes the young consumers who traditionally buy music. When were buying music on our phones, using operator billing, then we can say that the technology has really come of age.”
