Though still in its infancy, UK mobile phone payment service
Payforit has been hailed as a success by mobile payment processor
Bango, based on results of the first 1 million transactions it has
processed.
Payforit, which supports mobile content purchases of up to £5
($10), enables users to charge purchases to their mobile phone
accounts, is a joint initiative of mobile phone service providers
Vodafone, T-Mobile, 3, O2 and Orange. Payforit went into full
service on 1 September 2007.
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According to Bango’s analysis, 92 percent of transactions were
successfully completed, 7 percent failed because users had
insufficient funds to complete their purchase and only 1 percent
were not completed as a result of a payment processing
failure.
Commenting on the data, Steve Ricketts, head of third party
services at Orange
UK, said: “It is great to see such clear evidence that Payforit is
performing so well, Bango’s numbers show that the scheme is
delivering a happy end user experience and a successful payment
scheme for content providers.”
Bango pointed out that the occurrence of insufficient subscriber
funds is more noticeable where a high prepaid base exists and
consumers are unaware of the money they have remaining on their
phones before making a purchase. The UK market has a comparatively
high prepaid user base, accounting for more than 60 percent of all
subscribers.
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By GlobalDataBango continued that benefits of Payforit include widening the
content choice available through easy payment and a significant
reduction in the need for expensive customer care. Bango’s research
revealed that the biggest improvement is in refund levels being
requested with fewer than one in 10,000 customer refund payments
compared with levels approaching 10 percent with premium-rate short
message services used to pay for downloads.
As part of its research, Bango also calculated the average
transaction speed, which it noted is “a key metric for improved
customer experience”. Average transaction speed is worked out as
the time elapsed between the user clicking the buy link and seeing
the confirmation web page. Across all five mobile networks the
average was five seconds and in the best cases an average of two
seconds was achieved.
Six online content merchants are now live on Payforit. Content
offered includes games, maps, ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers
and video clips.
