- From: Stephane Boyera <boyera@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:53:56 +0100
- To: Ricardo Varela <phobeo@gmail.com>
- CC: Web Payments CG <public-webpayments@w3.org>
Hi Ricardo, > Just a comment on the "95% of mobile subscriptions are prepaid". What do > you think is the issue with that? no issue, just a fact. Usually people associate carrier billing with post-paid billing. See for instance wikipedia definition in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment "Direct operator billing, also known as mobile content billing, WAP billing, and carrier billing, requires integration with the operator. It provides certain benefits: the operators already have a billing relationship with the consumers, the payment will be added to their bill." but technically I agree that charges on prepaid-account can be considered as carrier billing. That said, the issue is exactly what you say in your last paragraph: it is very restricted by most regulations. The reason of this restriction imho is that you can usually complain about a bill when you see how much someone has charge you compared to what he promised to charge, but with pre-paid, you, as a user, have no way to track the transactions that is charged to your sim. You just know when you reached the end of your credit. Regulation have evolved in many countries, where now each transactions must be announced to the user with an SMS after it has be removed from the account. The regulation have evolved in that direction (lots of restriction also on premium numbers and alike now) to protect the users, and this is definetly extra burden for merchants. In all case, in my opinion, the clear trend in the last 5 years is surely not towards developing carrier billing, but towards using mobile money as a general payment system for unbanked populations, at least in sub-saharan africa. All in one, I agree with you that carrier billing on prepaid could be good and easy for merchants, but I'm very doubtful that there will be sudden change in the trend. cheers steph -- Stephane Boyera stephane@w3.org W3C +33 (0) 6 73 84 87 27 BP 93 F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Friday, 31 January 2014 11:54:23 UTC