SMS Billing – A Revolutionary Way to Accept Payment Globally Online

Posted on December 15, 2010

Today, we are going to discuss SMS billing, the new, innovative payment solution that is fast growing as a new way to pay and receive money online.

The technology works on cell phones and the user is only required to have a mobile handset that is fully enabled to send and receive text message and an account with an SMS billing service provider of their choice.

As a payment method, SMS billing has its own distinct advantages over the conventional payment and banking systems:

First, the SMS billing system is absolutely hassle free and provides instant gratification by eliminating the need to queue up in banks to deposit cash or cheques/checks.

Secondly and most importantly, SMS payment eliminates the need to use debit and credit cards. That means that you can accept cash from the customers without credit cards and PayPal accounts. This is particularly important because, with the inherent security risk associated with the use of debit and credit cards, some people are wary of using them.

SMS billing provides a much secure way to pay without providing credit card numbers and integrating SMS payment option is a guaranteed way to increase your sales and revenue.

There are many players in the mobile payment market, notable among which are Boku, Zong and SmsCoin. These all work perfectly for sending and receiving payments, but SmsCoin provides the highest coverage with presence in over 80 countries. Boku and Zong have a bit smaller coverage, with presence in 63 and 38 countries respectively.

SmsCoin is also more flexible in signing up new users and unlike Boku and Zong whose users are usually registered companies, SMS coin cuts down on the paper work involved by allowing access to individual businesses and users.

It is thus not surprising that SMS coin boasts to have completed millions of successful mobile payment transactions for more than 60,000 projects of varied scales; from small personal blogs to some of the top social networking sites the likes of facebook and Twitter.

SmsCoin was developed under the administration of Aggregator Ltd and since its inception four years ago, in the summer of 2006, the company has grown tremendously and is undoubtedly one of the biggest players in the mobile payment industry.

As a monetization tool for online publishers, app developers and other online business owners, SMS coin is easy to integrate on any website. You can also use SmsCoin to accept donations on your website. They have a huge variety of scripts (150+) that work seamlessly with the majority of Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

These scripts help you to set up a payment gateway so that you can allow paid access to a service or a certain section of your website. This can be a training area, a game access point, or the download area for a piece of software or game. To complete the transaction, the website visitor is required to send a short SMS message to a specified number. Once they do that, they are then charged a specific amount though their mobile service (carrier) provider.

A small portion of the revenue generated is retained by SmsCoin as processing fee, a certain amount goes to the mobile carrier, and the remaining amount goes to the online publisher (the website owner).

The percentage of the revenue that goes to the mobile carriers can be as high as 30+ percent depending on the country and you should thus consider the rate charged for each of the countries to which the SMS payment service is available and account for that in your targeted income.

My final thought

SMS payment systems, like other online payment options have a security risk involved, but the SMS billing service providers are keenly aware of these and continuously working to ensure safer and more secure online payment for their users. SmsCoin not only block any fraudulent transactions, but ban the accounts of such users as well.

Whether as a standalone payment option or an extra payment solution, SMS payment is worth exploring.

It just makes sense that the very reliable, conventional methods of payment will at some point be overtaken or complimented by newer and more innovative options and SMS payment is just one of these.

So, go ahead and give it a shot – it could just be the step you need take to boost your website conversion rates and profits.

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