Billing Revolution: Credit Card Buying By Phone

If the phone is rapidly becoming most people’s digital conduit, it’s natural that a number of companies are trying to make it easier to buy through the phone. For years people have been hicker dickering with pay through the phone bill, but it causes a number of problems, not least that it involves the carrier and that means they’ll want a significant cut. It also means that the carrier will likely require double or even triple confirmation of a purchase, and each go-round gives the user time to lose interest in a purchase.

An interesting company I’ve been hearing more about is Billing Revolution, which has an offering that changes this dynamic considerably. Their focus is on delivering secure pages to your phone that collect name and credit card info just as would a web page viewed on PC. Here’s how they describe themselves:

What we do

Billing Revolution provides credit card payment technology and services to the mobile industry. Are you looking to sell products and services through the mobile channel? Our turnkey solution is just the ticket and it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.
Whether you’re a mobile game publisher, online retailer, small business owner, national retailer, media company, advertising agency, publisher or an individual looking to sell your creations, we’ve got it covered.

So what’s so revolutionary? Ever tried to make a web based purchase from a phone? Ouch! Till we came along it required a user experience first aid kit. “Text the 12 digit code to the 5 digit short code, sign up online, click to call, run home and open up your email..” or “take a picture of the billboard and we’ll get back to you.”. Or, how about this one; you have your shopping cart full with 10 products, you click “check out” and up comes that familiar link: “click here to call now.” Okay, so maybe you’re not ready to buy a diamond ring from your phone… Can you buy a movie ticket? Yes!

Billing Revolutions technology solves the major challenges that have held mobile commerce back...

Secure Purchase Page

Mr Phone doesn’t like secure pages and we’ve solved this issue through our proprietary technology

Single Click Checkout:

Ama-who? That’s right; we’re pioneering the mobile single click check out. Jump on board cause the train is leaving the station folks. But seriously, no sign up, no pin, no user name, no chatting with the nice folks at the call center. When you make your first purchase, we “tag” your phone and we recognize you when you come back to buy your favorite product. It’s that easy. We’ve not only invented mobile commerce, we’ve enhanced it with “single click” ease!

No Online Sign Up required!

We understand the mobile channel and we’ll never tell you to go back to your desktop computer-we get it and the only thing we have to fear is: is “text to buy”. How about text to punt?

Their model works both for virtual goods and physical goods – there’s an easy tool to create merchandising pages, and an API to integrate commerce and fulfillment through your regular website.

I haven’t seen their solution in action but based upon the web site they are definitely addressing the key bottlenecks of the mobile buying challenge. Another really important aspect of this solution is that the transaction cost is low – just 50 cents a purchase with no minimum. That’s valuable because the credit card company is already getting their percentage cut – adding another big cut on top of that would destroy the business model. Happily, they are going for volume over ring. Pun intended.

Great concept – definitely one whose time has come. If you sell stuff online, they are definitely worth a look as a way of anticipating and capitalizing on the mobile commerce “revolution.”

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.