**10 Things to Know about SMS Billing**
 

I'm in the country of Andorra for the next 2 weeks, working with the Global Acces team, and we've put together a short list based on questions we've had in the past about SMS Billing. Everyone wants it and needs it, they just don't know a lot about it. Here are some of the basics:

1) SMS is a process that uses a text message to authorize payment from a mobile phone or pre-paid cell phone.

2) The user is not charged for the text sent, but for the receipt of payment that is returned in a text.

3) Used best in countries outside of North America since credit cards are the preferred method of payment; however the rest of the world has been using SMS where available to pay for many things.

4) You can also use SMS to process non-adult wherever SMS is available. Things like charitable contributions, contests where there is voting involved, lotteries, e-books, etc (for those of you who have mainstream business)

5) Content is NOT delivered through the mobile phone. The user gets a pin code and number to text to which allows access to the site.

6) Access can be offered in minutes, hours, or days. For example, in the UK you can offer a week’s access to your site, and at the end of the week, you can rebill for another 10£ and give them another week of access. More countries offering weekly rebills are coming soon.

7) You can offer pay-per-jerk access to your site. Have clips or scenes available for a set amount instead of giving them access to your members’ area.

8) Sales are posted in real time.

9) True Anonymous billing – charge shows up on the phone bill as a text message.

10) Limits risk of abuse – No way can user deny making the sale.

Global Acces takes the risk out of processing obscure countries even further, they pre-pay you for the sale. Meaning, other billing companies who offer SMS hold the sale until they are paid by the carrier, then they pay you. Global Access pays you the Monday after the sale is made, guaranteed. No waiting 60 days to see if that sale made it through and didn't get charged back.

Here is a list of the countries Global Acces currently offers SMS in:

United Kingdom
Russian Federation
Czech Republic
Estonia
Ukraine
Tajikistan
Lithuania
Denmark
Finland
Kazakhstan
Poland
Kyrgyzstan
Norway
Latvia
Sweden
Belgium
Hungary
Portugal
Germany
Austria
Spain
Netherlands
Bulgaria

Hope that helped, if you have any further questions, feel free to hit me up on ICQ or
Manuel 233594249:thumbsup

Happy Hump Day!

Great post JenniDahling!

1) SMS is a process that uses a text message to authorize payment from a mobile phone or pre-paid cell phone.

more money for all :)

Interested in buying great SMS domain names?
billbysms.com
sexbysms.com

;))))

Really cool post, SMS would be so handy

I used sms before but the actual payouts received where massively lower than what the customer was billed.

Can you show me a link to rates and charges, percentages received etc etc?

Unfortunately the carriers take a huge percentage :(

So it doesn't say who the premium sms biller was? A company name or anything?

any plans for getting Romania on that list ?
this fuckers sms like theres no tomorrow

Here is the Global Acces Rates

The country's carrier sets the charge, but you can set the parameters as to how much time you want to allow per SMS.

That is stated most of the times, other times you need to contact your phone operator to get these details, however it does not state what the product was they paid for nor does any items contain references neither.
In many parts of Europe you can go buy a prepaid sim card at the gas station without ID or any other verification required in case you don't want it on your normal phone bill :thumbsup

Romania is definitely on our list, we have already performed tests there in the past :thumbsup

Hmmm, as far as i know, it is not allowed to do premium rate calls pro minute or pro package in USA...

Well its not really "true anonymous billing" then is it? It's discreet billing which most adult companies already have.

Premium rate calls is fine, no problems with that at all, SMS on the other hand is not allowed at the moment in USA.

I don't suggest people to use Phone billing in USA since for the American market credit cards is without doubt a preferred way of payment due to high penetration and low fees :2 cents:

When you pay by phone or SMS you do not need to provide your name, e-mail, address or any other kind of information that can be considered personal so I would consider it slightly more discreet then that what the majority of adult companies are offering.

We actually do not even have a form to fill even if people wanted to give us their details :2 cents:

On the phone bill you would normally see a short code as well as an amount but without specifications of what it is, the same short code can be shared by as many as 100s or even 1000s of vendors, so making a purchase with SMS does not automatically put you in reference to a specific site or product.

Can you bill for "the return text" ? For example how the Astro people do it. They send you one text a day with your zodiac info.

I have been working on a mainstream idea where something similar happens. The customer sends me a text and we send them something back, and that text we sent back needs to be billed.


Sebastian

Your rates are high. Put on top what the carriers charge as well and its hardly worth it is it? I might be missing something here but from my experience before, I was lucky to walk away with 20% of the total charge for the membership.

Ross, to give you an example, on the UK we offer weekly recurring billing, customer pays 10 pounds, and the payout to you would be 6$.

11: Due is sexy. I'd go gay for him :1orglaugh

£10 is almost $16. Meaning a customer is paying $64 for 4 weeks access (almost a month) and the paysites cut is only $24.

It does sound a bit worse than it actually is.

The £10 is including VAT which is 17,5%, the actual charge would be roughly £8,55, then there is domestic taxes added and paid on behalf of people as required by law. I know that many people "forget" this when billing by credit card, just because you can get away with it doesn't mean it will never cause you problems.

Furthermore the customer accept the charge today, but is not charged on his phone bill until the end of his billing cycle, typical people receive their phone bills monthly giving them 2-4 weeks to pay, sometimes bills are send out quarterly as well. We pay out the first monday after the user ACCEPT the charge, regardless if he pay or not.

The payment is guaranteed and often made by us to our clients before they are even booked on the phone bills. We never reduce any kind of fees, charge backs or refunds from clients.

It's no secret the costs of billing is high on SMS compared to Credit Card but sometimes getting ~45% guaranteed ($6 out of $13) works better than 85% of $0 because your customer don't have a cerdit card!

Put it up for your non credit card countries such as Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Czech etc etc and you WILL see a difference :thumbsup

I'll hold the camera!:winkwink:

Does that apply to adult aswell? Sms is fine for mainstream, i followed the works doing a show on myfamilytv with sms billing. The biz with was a failure, since they did lie about their amount of viewers, but the system worked.

Indeed we can.:thumbsup

Jenni rocks:-)!!!!!

Pervert! :1orglaugh

In most European countries, premium phone billing for adult has been a standard practice for a long time.:thumbsup

There's no doubt about it SMS billing is improving, and expanding on a global level. I say it to programs religiously. Add as many payment options as you can to your processing pages, as eventually it's up to the customer on how they want to, or can pay.

With SMS being a preferred way of charging in many countries (and rapidly growing) It's a no brainier to add this. To not make it sound like a love fest either, but Morten, and the team at Global access know their stuff, and at worst case scenario it behooves programs to take a look at these guys :thumbsup

When are the gonna throw in turkey with that bunch.

Due is the man! GA FTW! :thumbsup

Yes, yes I am. :Graucho

Tell the other Johnny to hit me up on ICQ:thumbsup

this is a very informative post. Thanks and lets connect on it.

now that does help to reduce the risk as GA seems to be taking it.




fight the 411!

GlobalAcces can bill Turkey via phone :2 cents:

Will do :) Might take a while, we both need a rest, we've been a bit busy: http://www.gfyboard.com/showthread.php?t=906266

That is a concept a lot of people haven't seen before. Usually it takes between 30-60 days for the carrier to pay on a sale. During that time, usually on phone billing, there is the possibility that the user charges it back to the phone company, which of course means the telco won't pay for the sale.

Global Acces not only guarantees the sale, but pre-pays you for it the Monday after the sale is made. Can you imagine if all your payment processors did this:winkwink:




Fight the holdtime!

I spoke about US.

Does rates are not to joke with :) Why does global-access take about 50%? What makes them better than other providers like say Mblox?

Hey Jenni... when u get a few free movements can u ICQ me? Thanks

Interesting.

Very good explaination Ms. Jenni

I will contact you within a few weeks because I would know more to implement into a new project we are working on :P

Good question!

Global Accés S.L. does not take anything near 50%, if you are comparing rates with other providers be sure to compare them within the same tarif.

We also do not have monthly fees or setup fees, we handle the legal compliance issues, we prepay our clients before the telecoms actually pay and we take care of refunds and charge backs whenever required. We take the full financial risks.

We offer a full managed service without setup fees or monthly fees. We are fully integrated into both NATS and MPA3 and also offer free custom integration work for anyone with custom back ends!

Ok let?s take Sweden for example? Your payout of $ 0.80 is for what tariff? 30 SEK?

If you don't mind sharing that information...

True dat. Volume of calls, packages for the dropcharge, pro minute charges etc, all varies the rates, usually...

We charge 16 SEK per SMS in sweden, that's about $2

We pay you 80 cents, guaranteed. Make a sale today - Get paid monday the 24th of May , obviously volume speaks, if you got volumes lets talk and see how I can earn your business :thumbsup

You are comparing us to other companies who charge ?400-500 setup fee and between ?500-?1000 / month for either shared or unique short codes, then pay you 45-60 days EOM (what's up with that? why is there no FIXED payment date, don't you wanna know when you get paid ? )

After 1500 SMS's you paid your initial costs (3000 SMS's if you pay your webmasters), THEN you gotta start paying your montly fees.

I'm not saying that we are absolutely the best on the market for EVERYBODY. Volumes speak for everybody, at least with us you break even AND make a profit when you get your first message, with others you may need up to 100 text messages / day to break even (without considering development costs etc. )

Hit me up and lets talk, if you give us a try and you make less with us than with another company who offer the same I'll pay you 2 times the difference and wish you good luck with my competitor :-)

Actually that is not a bad payout if you have low PSMS volume. 16 SEK is a strange tariff but I guess it is possible for some short codes. Or maybe that is VAT excluded? Because that would make more sense. In that case customer is charged 20 SEK.

But anyway, I like your service as it looks simple enough for anyone to use. And with no monthly fees you can?t really lose anything by giving it a try.

QUESTION =

is this possible...

have a customer send a text w/ the text code for billing to authorize charges along w/ their shipping info and set up for recurring billing of physical shippable products

what are the max allowable customer charge rates?

In USA it is legal to bill for adult services via premium rate numbers as long as there is no nudity appearing on the same page as the phone number.


Thanks, can't argue with that :thumbsup:thumbsup
It IS possible, many times the amount you can charge will not be high enough to cover shipped products. The maximum amount varies from country to country, In UK £10 per SMS, in Spain ?1.20 per SMS etc

Send me a mail to [email protected] and I'll review your product and let you know where I think it would make sense to start billing your customers :thumbsup

Interesting thread.

Hypothetically, SMS would be nearly ideal payment option IF:

- the carriers wouldn't charge you to death and you could use this at the rates comparable to a third party CC biller
- you could bill up to 100 USD / charge that would appear on your phone bill
- you could authorize re billing without having to confirm every time a new charge is to be done

Of course there's the 18+ authorization and lot of restrictions regarding telecommunications locally in every each country, so this is very unlikely to happen.

I'm amazed, a few companies signed up last week and are already reporting sales. Had to bump this. Muy bien!