Sri Lankan operator Mobitel is launching direct carrier billing in the market with Fortumo.
The partnership will allow Mobitel subscribers to enjoy premium digital content, pay for games, in-app content and digital services by charging purchases to their postpaid phone bill or prepaid number.
Fortumo’s Hosted DCB solution makes it easy for digital service providers to launch direct carrier billing in a scalable manner. Fortumo manages the checkout flow and localisation on behalf of its merchants, accelerating the time-to-market and reducing the amount of development work needed to launch the payment method. The same integration can be used to collect payments from Mobitel and more than 280 other mobile operators connected to Fortumo’s platform across the world.
In Sri Lanka, only a small portion of people have credit cards while most own a smartphone. This creates a challenge for digital service providers: while the majority of people can access online content, most are unable to pay for premium services. Carrier billing solves this issue by allowing any user to charge online payments to their phone bill. Furthermore, carrier billing does not require users to own or create any accounts, no personal data is collected during the checkout process and payments are completed through a simple 2-step verification process.
“Mobile operators are becoming the central point of entertainment for digital audiences, especially in emerging markets such as Sri Lanka. Low credit card penetration and high smartphone ownership position telcos perfectly to deliver digital content to their subscribers while carrier billing gives service providers the solution to monetise that content,” said Taavi Krusell, VP of Telco Partnerships at Fortumo.
