Billing

Bango (News - Alert) has reported "strong key performance data for billing off-deck content and services," through a new UK industry standard called Payforit.

 

Based on an analysis of the last million transactions processed by the company in the UK mobile market, 92 percent were completed successfully with an error rate of less than 1 percent, Bango officials say: "And with refund levels at below 0.01 percent of payments processed, there was a significant reduction in the need for costly customer care."

 

Payforit is a WAP billing standard for mobile purchases, which provides a familiar, Web-like payment experience for consumers browsing and buying content from their mobile phones. It is the product of nearly two years of development between the UK mobile operators and technical service providers including Bango.

 

The product is meant to ensure that UK users see the same standardized payment screens across every operator network and when purchasing from third party content provider.

 

"This analysis is so compelling that I believe all other major mobile markets will choose to standardize on the WAP model," said Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing at Bango and chair of the MMA mobile Web committee. "In the US this approach to off-portal content purchasing is increasingly adopted by mobile operators, content providers and though the work of the MMA."

 

WAP billing is now being promoted in the US through the Mobile Marketing Association's Best Consumer Practice Guidelines and is already supported by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile (News - Alert) for off-deck content purchases. 

 

 

Mike Short, Chairman of the UK Mobile Data Association, said Payforit grew out of "a need for consistent operational standards, light touch regulation and interoperability across all networks. As Bango's results show, this is a good start."

 

The benefits of WAP billing and schemes such as Payforit in Britain go beyond maximizing content provider revenue to include widening the content choice available through payment and, through Web services, offer a reduction in the need for customer care. The research shows that "the biggest improvement is in low refund levels being requested," Bango officials say.

 

As part of its research, Bango also calculated the average transaction speed. This is worked out as the time elapsed between the user clicking the "Buy" link and seeing the confirmation Web page. Across all five networks the average is five seconds and in the best cases an average of two seconds is achieved.

 

Earlier this month Bango launched the "Get On My Mobile" Bango Button so users of social Web sites, media sharing sites, forums or blogs can make their content available to mobile phone users at the push of a button. 

 

The Bango Button "bridges the gap between the PC and mobile worlds by using the simplicity of the Internet, opening up the world of content to mobile users," according to the Bangers.

 

Bango Buttons are recommended for popular sites such as Facebook, MySpace (News - Alert), YouTube, Flickr, Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn, Blogger, Orkut and WordPress.

 

Bango has made it easy to push content, such as photos and music files, from a PC Web page to a user's mobile phone -- no special mobile expertise is required. "A Bango Button can link directly to photos stored on a PC site, resizing them for different mobile phones and presenting the download page," according to Bango officials. 

 

"Like most bands, we have a MySpace site where people can listen to our music and see when we have gigs coming up," said Claudio Tinnirello of the Californian electro-pop band, Moonlife. "Bango Buttons on our site at www.myspace.com/moonlife make it easy for our fans to get wallpapers and ringtones onto their mobile. They'll even be able to get a map of where we'll be playing, making it easy to find the venue."

  

According to research firm Yankee Group (News - Alert), 33 percent of all internet users regularly access social network Web sites. "An increasing number of consumers want anytime, anywhere access to their online communities and the content that lives there," said Jill Aldort, Yankee Group senior analyst, adding that "the recent buzz around open platforms is just that -- still buzz for now."