Thailand's second largest mobile operator, Telenor's subsidiary, dtac and the mobile payments company Fortumo, this week announced the launch of direct carrier billing, enabling more than 27 million of dtac's subscribers to pay for top digital content and gaming by charging purchases to their phone bill. Thailand is the second market where Fortumo and Telenor Group have launched direct carrier billing, following an earlier partnership in Pakistan.
According to Fortumo, with the launch of direct carrier billing which uses header enrichment to facilitate payments, dtac's mobile users will be able to make future payments through a 1-click solution.
In markets where Fortumo provides direct carrier billing to its merchants, payment conversion for first-time payments is close to 40% and higher for repeat purchases, said Fortumo. Fortumo added that its internal data shows that 64.8% of paying users in Thailand accessed content from their mobile devices.
Tim Verouden, Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Services, Total Access Communication PLC (dtac)
It is our strategy to collaborate with world class partners to attract customers of those partners and leverage their products and services to develop an innovative campaign to maximize the benefits to our customers, as part of our Best in Digital Services strategy aiming to develop innovative digital services to meet customers’ data and internet demands
Gerri Kodres, Chief Business Officer at Fortumo
Only a quarter of the global population has access to credit cards. A majority of the unbanked people are located in emerging markets. This means mobile payments provide a strong alternative to bank-based payments in the fastest growing smartphone markets of the world. We are excited to seize this opportunity together with dtac in the Thai market and build direct carrier billing into the default payment method for online payments in the country.
Image By Benh LIEU SONG (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
