Premium Rate Phone Numbers For Payment
Has anyone explored using Premium Rate Phone Numbers to charge for a product or service instead of a conventional payment processor?
I was thinking why wouldn't this work - so long as the product/service is relatively cheap (say less than $20 [£10] or so, I can see no reason why using a premium rate number to collect the income would not work. A 5 minute call at $4 a minute, to grab the persons details, then the product can be sent out to the `buyer` by CD Rom in the normal mail…
I think it would be much harder for the buyer to do a chargeback. Or would it? I have absolutely no idea - perhaps one of you other AISers has explored this in detail. What did you find out?
Would it even work? Have I missed out a crucial shortcoming in the proposal? I guess that the seller would need a premium phone number for each target market (UK, Europe, Australia, US). Is it even possible to get numbers if you are not resident or your company is not domiciled?
Well, it's something to think about, I guess.
Comment by Paul — October 31, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
Gary,
You'd need to know how much you wanted to earn as the maximum charge to the client is £1.50 per minute and that is set by ICSTIS.
However, from that, you may only recieve about 30-40pence, depending upon volume.
I will get some rates so you can see if it's viable to start with.
Comment by Oli Allen — November 1, 2006 @ 1:13 am
Compare it to something like, say, Paypal:
- Paypal: I enter my username and password, and pay for my item.
- Phone: I go and get the phone (which isn't near the computer), type in the phone number, as I can't copy and paste, sit there holding the phone for 5 minutes (or however long), is it really worth my trouble?
That's not to say there's no merit to phone billing - it could work for people with no access to credit cards/Paypal.
HabboHotel.com uses (or used) this to allow you to buy in-game credits, and I've seen it used on some "online SMS" websites.
Then comes the fun part - complaints from irate parents when they see the phone bill
Comment by Chris H — November 1, 2006 @ 8:23 am
Compromise! PayPal now allow you to purchase using your mobile.
Comment by Anonymous Coward — November 1, 2006 @ 12:50 pm
I looked into SMS payments for a ring tone website and found the most providers would only give you a fraction of the actual amount charged; at most around 50-60% for those I looked into. It also varied depending on the users network. Either way, processing cards is obviously a lot cheaper; unless you run a particularly large operation, I doubt the costs associated with premium rate numbers and SMS services will outweigh the price required to offer such facilities.
Comment by DotComDosh — November 1, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
SMS is good, but be wary - if you're selling products that are off-handset, in the UK you'll need to use a proper e-money shortcode and follow the rather fiddly rules. Fun fun fun..
Comment by burt — November 1, 2006 @ 2:33 pm
Twa just some random thought, I don't have any plans to set up something that uses a prem rate #.
Sounds like it could be a goer, but a myriad of rules and regulations.