These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the Spedeal.com team, formed by Stuart Thomas and German Del Zotto.
Since I believe micropayments are one of the keys to full penetration of e-commerce, I would like to look specifically at WAP billing in this blog.
What is WAP billing?
WAP billing is where the user is billed through their mobile operator (Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, etc) so that they only need to confirm a payment without needing to enter personal or credit card details. WAP billing is used to fill a niche that is different from credit cards as they are designed for small payments under £10 or $10. Companies can take advantage of this, as it save on credit card transaction costs.
Businesses using WAP billing
So far it has proven particularly good for selling e-products such as ringtones, games, music, and e-gifts such as in the case of Fox Mobile, EA and Flirtomatic but there are also possibilities for database information or sale of metadata or SaaS based access to online software.
I see a real opportunity for business to use this as they are able to reach customers as they never did before, especially customers without credit cards, or unwilling to take the risk or spend the time filling out an online form with personal details.
Enablers of WAP billing
Netsize (netsize.com), PayGol (paygol.com) and Bango (bango.com) seem to be some of the players I have found so far that are enabling businesses to be able to accept WAP billing payments.
What we are looking at it how that can be feasibily included in our business model since operators tend to take a 45% commission. I will talk in later posts about how we either design our business model around micropayments or avoid them and whether WAP billing or other types are used.
