August was a busy time for carrier billing announcements. Beyond Vodafone’s tie-up with Android Market, rival carrier group Telefonica’s BlueVia developer program added API access to the carrier-billing-aggregation service offered by online and in-app mobile payments provider Boku; Boku also struck direct billing deals with French operators Bouygues Telecom and SFR, in addition to its existing deal with Orange France; and rival billing aggregator, PaymentOne, established a direct billing relationship with German operator O2 Telefonica.
Earlier in the summer another carrier-billing aggregator of online and in-app payments fame, Zong, was acquired by e-commerce brand eBay to integrate with online payments platform PayPal. Yet another aggregator, Bango, signed an agreement with mobile-browser maker Opera Software to enable carrier billing on the Opera App Store. Meanwhile, US carrier Verizon teamed up with aggregator Payfone to enable its subscribers to purchase digital goods online via their mobile bill.
There is definite momentum there, and a mutual interest among carriers and iOS ecosystem competitors to keep that momentum going.
Guillermo Escofet is a Senior Analyst and a member of Informa’s Mobile Content and Applications (MCA) team
This article is originally published on Informa Telecom & Media