Here is the description of the session from the programme
| B4 | Collecting Money | How to get the money in! How do all the different customer payment mechanisms compare? How do I work with mobile operators? Subscriptions vs One Offs? | Chris Newell, Russell Sheffield | 4/10, 8pm (Thurs) |
This session was delivered in two parts by a couple of companies that operate in this space.
First up is Impulse Pay
Started 4 years ago.
Want to make payments easy defeating the “buy now barrier”
Customers will spend money … But will not spend a lot of time, it is not worth the effort to get your credit card out.
A credit card payment typically takes 120 keystrokes, And this is way too much on a mobile.
Whereas the one-click does generate more sales.
People don’t like forms.
If you must have forms then prefill as much as you can.
PayForIt is a carrier based billing that lets you pay with one click to your operator bill. This can even run without a password.
iTunes app payments is very low friction, just a password entry.
Be warned many app stores do not pass on the customer details, so you cannot easily get to know the customers who pay, you’ll need a work around for this, eg post the details separately.
Premium SMS is still around, but it could mean dropping out of the app, and can mean a poor user experience.
Their clients quote that a swap from PayPal to payforit have seen a 50% increase in conversions
Payforit allow from 50p to £30 in 50p increments. Includes auto charge which is recurring charge.
Payout is after 45 days and the split is 25/75
These margins are not so good for physical goods, but a bit more acceptable for digital.
[Indeed it is not possible to run a business selling actual goods where the payment charge is 35%, compare this to iZelttle, also a mobile payment platform with 2.75% that’s nigh on 10 times cheaper.
If only the mobile operators would wake up and smell the coffee, they could have payforit being used for numerous types of sales in real shops, and make a _lot_ more money, if only they would give up the high margin. OK I’ll get off the soap box now]
They have clients who have switched from pay pal to payforit and they see a 50% increase in conversion and sometimes a 90% sales rate.
Even though PayPal have a mobile service, and his opinion is that this increase in sales is due to the lower friction of paying with payforit. This is a central lesson, as per the beginning of his lecture.
When users are switched to a second payment site in an Iframe with different branding, They see a 30% drop off rate, thus if this is the route you must go down then make sure the two sites are closely aligned in look and feel, so that there is no dissonance with the user, and they do not become concerned.
It’s good practice to confirm the payments and then, give the user the chance to cancel or get help. If it is a subscription, details of how to stop (via a link)
SMS payment methods [limited in the value for each SMS eg £5, so only good for low value transactions]
Mobile Terminated (MT) the user is sent a code to enter into the web browser, this can work for any browser system
Mobile Originated(MO) the user is told to enter a short string to a SMS message that they send to a short code.
Make the string a word, as people find that easier to type than some random collection of letters.
Advantages of this is that you are provided with the msisdn and therefore you can then market to them.
Advice: keep looking at the payment process and try different methods because it can make a big difference. Make sure you also look at the wording as this can be a barrier, he states a case of a 10% increase in conversion after changing one word.
All Things Mobile 
Posted on November 12, 2012
0