The Bible Societies  of America, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Russia and South Africa, have launched an international direct-to-consumer mobile internet site for delivering the Bible to mobile phone subscribers worldwide. For the first time, Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation, are available for download to mobile phone users in all countries. Mobile users access the site by entering http://wapbibles.com into their phone browser. The product follows hard on the heels of products like Megavoice, dubbed the God Pod, a solar-powered, hand-held computer that plays a digitally recorded reading of the Bible.
ChristianMobile, the creator of VirtualBible, the first ever Bible delivered to a mobile phone by way of a Premium SMS text message, has facilitated the implementation of the Bible Societies direct-to-consumer mobile internet site http://wapbibles.com.
The service enables mobile phone users in more than 150 countries across all networks to purchase and download the Bible on their mobile phones by visiting http://wapbibles.com from their mobile phone. New Bible translations and versions are being added on a weekly basis.
While mobiles are great for up-to-the-minute information urgent messages and football scores, we are offering people an opportunity to use the same technology for reflection, says Bible Society UK Development Officer, Michael Pfundner. Just two minutes Bible reading, on a crowded train, can be really helpful on a busy day.
The service uses Bangos global billing solution which dynamically presents the best payment method to the consumer. Once in the site a customer can choose one of various payment methods to pay for a Bible download, such as direct operator billing (including PayForIt in the UK), Premium SMS, credit/debit cards and PayPal.
We opted for the Bango billing solution which provides browse and buy technology to power the Bible Societies newly-launched WAP site says ChristianMobile Marketing Executive, Bertus Preller. The WAP site will engage directly with its users in order to promote and sell a number of Bible Translations in all languages across all mobile carriers. The browse and buy technology enables users to pay in a chosen currency and to download the Bible in easy steps. We hope to engage also with mobile carriers, mobile aggregators and Christian media companies to broaden the Bible distribution.