Taking it personally - engaging with mobile marketing

Marketing to mobile can generate some good responses. With the current economic situation, mobile offers new opportunities to reach customers and reduced marketing costs. The results from mobile marketing can also be very effective, with response rates over 8% being generally measured.

However, anyone looking to run a mobile campaign needs to seriously address the way it is run, who they are contacting and the offer is.

Mobile phones are devices that most of us have with us most of the time. There is a strong sense of identity attached to our mobiles – the type of handset ('I have an iphone' etc), wallpaper or ringtone is as much a part of our identity as the clothes we wear. What’s more, it’s the device that we contact our family, friends and loved ones on.

Whatever the marketing campaign, be it SMS, mobile sites or Bluetooth proximity marketing, sensitivity to the mobile user is paramount. Imagine if you are waiting for an SMS from your partner and a marketing text arrives on your phone? It’s going to annoy the user and put the brand in a very poor light.

A recent discussion amongst technological savvy mobile users about mobile marketing generated many responses like these:

‘Its like the people in the street who try to thrust leaflets on us, except its just about possible to dodge them.’

‘I have received two text messages from businesses I was walking past, both offering immediate discounts. I can think of no other way to more effectively ensure that I will never do business with either establishment again.’

‘If anyone sent a message to my cellphone or other device just because I walked past their store, billboard, advertising poster, etc., they would lose my business forever.’

It is unlikely that a billboard, direct mail or TV ad could cause as much offence, purely from attempting to contact potential customers.

You may think therefore, that mobile marketing is likely to upset customers too much or it is too fraught with problems to run a campaign. However, the highly personal feelings about mobile can be used to great effectiveness. There are many examples of mobile marketing campaigns that have generated an excellent response.

The key is to ensure that it is permission based, highly targeted and offers a real benefit to the customer or potential customers.

Gaining permission often requires more than a simple ‘soft opt in’. It is important and beneficial to get a clear consent from a customer to send them marketing information to their phone. That consent should also be recent. If they opted in 12 months ago then you would need to get their permission again.

Well targeted campaigns means sending the right type of content on the right day at the right time.

The benefit comes from giving your users a clear offer – discounts, free products or mobile content are all examples of offers that work well.

So, mobile marketing has it’s benefits, but working with experienced professionals to deliver campaigns can ensure that you are effective in what you do.

Roaming data charges to be more transparent ...

... but not necessarily cheaper!

Never ones to do things through self regulation, the mobile network operators in Europe are likely to be forced to provide transparency in charges for services such as MMS and internet access. The proposed legislation is expected to come into force in 2009.

Users can expect to be informed of the cost to use data, and even an ongoing total. This is a small step in the right direction, however, there are no moves to reduce the excessive roaming charges. Hopefully once users see how much it is costing them, the operators may decide to reduce the charges to a more reasonable level without futher legislation. But then pigs might fly.

Netsize Annual Survey is out!

The excellent Netsize annual survey and guide is now out. It has some excellent information on phone usage in a number of countires, as well as well written articles on mobile entertainment, marketing and content.

You can download it here: http://www.netsize.com

Will Google and Apple Force the Mobile Networks to Rethink Their Business Model?

For some years now, there has been a major division between the internet and mobile economies. The internet is largely free to user and the mobile isn’t.

Google has made an art form of the free model, releasing all kinds of apps, including mobile ones at no cost. On the other hand, the networks charge for almost everything. As one Orange executive once told me ‘We do not understand any customer unless there is a billing relationship’. In other words, unless the network is charging them for something they are not considered to be a customer.

The iphone has moved the mobile smartphone market forwards, by offering a genuinely seemless mobile internet experience. Just like your PC the internet is just ‘there’, it’s always on. As soon as that happens, adding all kinds of internetty applications – not just games, but maps, weather and so on, become standard.
The evidence of the success is from the iphone Appstore and the results which show that Apple’s users access the internet considerably more than others.

Whilst Apple’s entry into the phone market has been to produce a great handset and beautiful operating system, Google’s entry has been less glamorous, but potentially more significant.
Google started by building some excellent mobile applications – for example maps and email – and has now launched it’s own OS.
And now everyone’s doing it! Expect 2009 to be the year of the smartphone and the year of the application store … Microsoft will be launching Bazaar this year.

The problem for mobile networks is that the offerings from these companies challenge their traditional billing relationship. Why pay for a call when you can use Skype (available for both iphone and Google phone)? Why use SMS when you can use instant messenger? Why send an MMS when you can email your pictures, or upload them to your Facebook? Why SMS to Twitter when you can send it for nothing with a Twitter app on your phone?

Even location services, which were previously the (expensive) monopoly of the networks will be opened up with Google Latitude.

Apart from the basic data cost (typically around £7.50-£15 per month), users can do pretty much everything on their smartphones without having to pay for them. The money in mobile will be in paid apps and mobile advertising.

So the networks have a dilemma. Do they embrace the new free(ish) world of mobile or carry on regardless and make money while they can? Given their past form, I suspect it will be the latter.

Mobile Marketing News Service Launched

OK, it's not the first, but our new
mobile marketing news service is intended to give another spin on what's happening in the world of mobile advertising and marketing.

Why are we different?
First of all, we come with no vested interests to a network, handset or membership. Secondly we are not tied to any particular medium, whether it is SMS, applications or mobile web, we are happy to report it. Finally, we are looking at the influence of general developments onto marketing. For example, the recent launch of Google Latitude may have no obvious marketing implicatations, however the expected launch of an API means that location based mobile advertising will become a practical possiblity.

The news service is here.

The Google Latitude Controversy

In the UK this week many people have been up in arms about Google Latitude. If you have missed it, Google’s has launched a new location app, which allows you to publish your location based on the position of your mobile phone. The complaint has been largely one of intrusion and a compromise to personal freedom.

Personal Liberty

The issue of freedom is completely understandable. This is especially so in the current climate in the UK. These day’s Britain is the most watched country in the world – we have four times more CCTV cameras than the rest of Europe put together.

The problem for citizens in the UK is this:
We cannot move, drive our cars, stop our cars or do anything without being watched. And on the other hand we feel no safer, and it doesn’t appear to reduce crime. It seems that technology is used as a means of indirect taxation and population control. In short, people in the UK are understandably suspicious of anything that monitors and tracks our movements.

The idea that you can be tracked through your phone, naturally worries people. However, Google Latitude has not introduced a new concept. Mobile network operators have been able to trace people through their mobiles for years, by triangulating to the nearest base station. This has been offered as both (expensive) location based services, and the data has been of use to the Police during criminal investigations. Any unscrupulous government or agency can easily track your location through your mobile.
What’s more services similar to Latitude have been available for a few years: it has been quite possible to track your friend/partner/family member’s already.

Will Latitude Change Things?

The main change is that it is Google who has introduced this. That means that it is free and works (or will work) seamlessly with existing Google Apps. And being Google, most people are now aware of it’s existence.
The main question raised about tracking someone’s location, is why would you want to? The worry is that employers will track their employees movements, partners will spy on each other, parents on their children and so on. It is quite understandable to be suspicious of the motives of someone who wants to track other people’s locations.

In fact, simply as a location tool there is little point to Latitude and will not take off. The following post on Mobile Industry Review makes the point very clearly: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/02/latitude_the_trojan_horse_--_why_whos_nearby_is_not_a_business.html

The point is where Latitude will go. As the author states: ‘Be under no delusion, Latitude is Googles Trojan horse into the social networking space.’

And that is the key to this. Mobile Social Networking will allow users to ‘socialise’ with people who are in close proximity. Location based-dating could boom from this. But there are numerous other location services that could benefit from Latitude: security applications – I don’t mean spying, I mean ones where people at risk (whether professional or personal) can publish their whereabouts. Then there are applications, like travel, transport or weather.

Although many of these have already been tinkered with, they have not really taken off. There are two big factors as to why: cost and trust. Outside of phones with GPS, location based service providers must pay the networks for each hit. On the whole, users are not willing to pay for such a service, so there is no broad commercial model currently for Location Based Services. On the reasonable assumption that Google Latitude will publish an API (which they have already done with Maps and many other apps), then any developer can access location data for free and including it in their application.

Whilst there is no doubt that trust is a major issue for users of with LBS, Google are better placed than anyone to establish that trust:

‘Don’t be Evil’ is Google’s slogan. OK, there are times when they have not always been perfect (Google China being a point of this), but that overall principle seems to be intact.
Google has gone to great pains to ensure that it’s Latitude service is not evil. Only the most recent location is stored, making it difficult to track an individual’s movements. Each user has control over how their location is published with three settings:
Automatic, Manual or Hide your location … or as the Mobile Industry Review article aptly describes it, Honest, Lie or Paranoia.

Until now, location based services have been the Cinderella of mobile applications. However, the whole point of mobile is that it is, mobile. Including your location into services or apps, is the obvious next step. With Google Latitude the ‘where am I’ service is pointless and unlikely to take off. We must look to the applications that can come out of it, bringing us real benefit.

Mobile and Technology Usage Figures

I am asked, probably on a daily basis, 'do you have any figures for the number of people who ...'.
Maybe my answer should be 'If you give me £3000 I can get you the report(s)' as that is how much they cost.

However, cobbling together various sources, the following is a general summary of the UK view mobile and technology attitudes and usage:

General UK mobile information:

There are over 64 million mobile handsets in the UK. More than one per person.
Most users, around 60%, are on pay as you go.
Just under 30% of users have a flat rate data plan for the internet. And around 40% use the mobile internet.
There are nearly 6.5 billion SMS sent each month in the UK (peak time is New Years).
There are around 5.5 million MMS sent each month in the UK.
Smart Phones account for less than 20% of the market. The ihpone is less than 1%.
Around 30% of people have their Bluetooth turned on all the time.

From a June 2008 study by Mintel:

I will only by an upgrade if there is an obvious benefit 53%
I wait to buy until the price comes down before buying 52%
I wait until I’m absolutely sure which is the best to buy 47%
I only buy something when I need to (ie replacement) 43%
I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer choice of new technology on offer 24%
By the time I’ve bought something, it’s already out of date 20%
With new technology, it’s best to stick to the most popular brands 17%
When I buy something, I sometimes worry I made the wrong decision 17%
I tend to buy new things I want as soon as they come to market 5%
None of these 4%

Digital items personally used are highlited in the table below,
June 2008 Base: 2,001 internet users aged 16+

Digital items personally used All

Mobile phone 90%
Broadband internet at home (via high-speed, always-on connection) 88%
Digital TV 62%
Portable digital music player, eg iPod, Zen, MP3 player 50
Wi-Fi (wireless internet connection) 44%
HD-ready TV set 34%
Personal video recorder 32%
Interactive services on digital TV 28%
Digital radio, ie DAB 27%
Podcasting (downloading audio from the internet for playback on your computer or MP3 player) 15%
PDA or other handheld computer, e.g. Palm, HP iPAQ or Dell Axim 10%
Internet dial-up at home 6%


According to the Mobile Life European Report, the British population tend to use the full range of mobile features:
(LSE, 2008)

used Bluetooth 50+%
recorded video using a mobile handset 37%
downloaded a music track 27%
accessed the internet using their mobile 46%

So there you have it. Some useful base line figures. Clearly we are a nation of texters (more than voice calls) and although things like mobile internet have a place, they are a smaller proporation of users.

iphone's impact out-weighs it's marketing share

There are a number of stats coming out that show the iphone and iphone users as having a significant impact on mobile content and advertising.

According to Getjar.com, the iphone represented just 0.04% of the mobile handset market in Dec 2008.
Admob, the mobile advertising network, reported that 16% of their users were on iphones, and 48% of the Smartphone market.

We are also seeing numerous reports of the success of Apple's App Store and iphone developers making bucket loads of money:

'Consumers downloaded more than 10 million iPhone applications within the App Store's first three days and 60 million in the first month, a $21 million windfall for Apple's developer partners'

So what is the significance of all this? In spite of iphone's small market share and in spite of the fact that their users tend to be a bit smug, there is no doubt that users are genuine early adopters. They both browse the web and download more than any other phone user. And if you are looking to develop mobile apps, there is a greater chance of success by developing for the iphone.

SMS is still the killer app

It's something I have been saying for a while, but a recent report shows that SMS is still the killer application for mobile and set to double in the next four years.

In their report‘Mobile Messaging Futures 2008 – 2013’, Portio Research found that the mobile messaging industry was worth $120bn in 2008, but set to grow, even in the current economic climate to over $220bn by 2013.

As well as the significant peer to peer marketing, the growth in SMS has been boosted by business messaging, such as mobile marketing or customer service applications. Another factor is the growth in the US. From a slow start, American mobile users have finally realised the benefits of SMS. It remains 'king' as it is cheap, simple to use and available across almost all phones and networks.

Whilst many in the mobile marketing and advertising sector have been talking about fancy applications, the impact of the iphone and so on, I am of the strong opinion that SMS will continue to drive any mobile campaign as it is such a killer application.

Users 'baffled' by extra phone features

This comes as no surprise, but a survey carried out by Mformation and reported on the BBC stated that 61% of users found setting up a new phone harder than moving bank accounts. And 85% of people said it was extremely difficult.

Whilst the handset manufacturers keep telling us that we want new features all the time, it would appear that most users are not that interested. 61% of people said that they did not bother using an application if they couldn't use it straight away.
We know that people are impateint when it comes to their phone. It also show that there is not sufficient reward in using extra features to bother with learning them. This supports my own view that most people want SMS and voice form their phones, and just aren't interested in other features.

Top Ten Mobile Marketing developments for 2009

Around this time of year it seems as though everyone is in the business of making predictions. Sticking your neck out these days can leave yourself open to ridicule later on, but never one to shy away from a bit of controversy, here’s my Top Ten Mobile Marketing Developments for 2009:

• SMS will grow continue to grow
  This may come under the heading ‘no shit Sherlock’. However, it is worth pointing out that in the current climate there will be a move away from mobile internet advertising and ad led content towards SMS. Even in 2008, some ad agencies were declaring that SMS was still the killer app for mobile marketing. With the current climate the move will be towards more direct and functional campaigns, such as Swift Cover’s vehicle insurance quotes by SMS.
  
  
• Bluetooth marketing will grow
  With the change last year in the Ofcom regulations, which saw Bluetooth as a broadcast, not a personal medium, a number of companies started to offer this as a proximity marketing solution. With the growth in these companies and the potential from Bluetooth we will see many more campaigns in 2009.
  
  
• QR
  My scepticism to QR (Quick Recognition) Codes, or 2D Bar Codes has changed this year. Whilst they have been around for some time, I tended to believe that they were useful only in Japan and were too niche for the European market. In the last year, however, the use of QR codes has made the idea more accessible to the public. For example, the newspaper City AM has a QR code on the front page in every issue. Pepsi also ran a QR campaign this year.
  The advantage of using the codes is that it provides the user with very fast access to further information – this could be anything from an SMS to a mobile link to an application download. This offers an ideal way to use mobile to enhance a print campaign.
  The real killer app in the QR world will be when handsets have the readers as standard. Top end Nokias have then as standard, and Google intend to include one in their next release of Android. Although this will represent a tiny percentage of the mobile market, it is likely that other handset manufacturers and mobile networks will follow suit.
  
  
• MMS will grow … but it will continue to remain niche
  MMS has a place in mobile. It is considerably less important than SMS - on a peer to peer level, most people use it very occasionally. However in the advertising and marketing area there is real potential. It offers a neat way of delivering pictures and video to handsets. This is particularly the case with couponing and ticketing (see below), so expect to see a growth in this area in 2009.
  
  
• Mobile Couponing and Ticketing will increase
  The potential in coupons and tickets sent to mobile has not been realised. The biggest opportunity for it’s increase comes from the current economic climate, where the drive to reduce costs will be the overriding factor for many companies. Add to this the need to reduce carbon emissions, and it becomes clear that mobile tickets are an obvious choice. One example of a form of ticketing is the mobile airline check in being offered by British Airways and some other companies. This delivers the 2d barcode that is on web tickets and boarding passes, but offers the advantage of not requiring a print out. If it’s safe enough for airports then it is easily safe enough for any type of event. The barcodes will have to be delivered by MMS of course.
  
  
  
• Location Based Services (LBS) will NOT take off
  Whilst I have always liked the idea of services that are linked to, or based on the user’s location, I have never been convinced that they will take off for one simple reason. Cost. In the UK the two issues are the charges made by the networks for location hits and the cost of converting postcode to Lat and Long data. Unlike most other countries in the world, in the UK the postcode to Lat/Long data must be bought on a yearly basis.
  For both companies and individual users the cost of LBS versus the benefit is not significant enough. If you add to this the fact that Google, for example offer good mobile mapping and location services for free, it hardly seems worth developing your own.
  
  
• Mobile internet overtakes PC based internet use
  OK, maybe not in the UK as a whole, but a combination of flat rate tariffs, better handsets and mobile USB ‘broadband’ will see a significant increase in the number of mobile internet users. Worldwide there will be more people connecting through their mobile network than a land-based ISP.
  Why is this significant for mobile marketing? With more internet users, propositioning content, and especially ad content for the mobile market becomes much more important. Whilst things like ‘mobile search’ will remain limited, applications that use the mobile internet will increase, along with the opportunities for ad funded content.
  
  
• Mobile security will become a bigger issue
  With more mobile applications such as banking and payment, along with an increase in mobile internet and marketing, expect to see more debate about security on handsets. An independent survey found that 5.6 million people in the EU already access financial information from their mobile phones, a 23.6 per cent jump from 2007. And with this jump expect to see an increase in scams such as phishing.
  On the marketing side, network operators may also introduce spam filtering for SMS if the levels of marketing increase.
  
  
• Targeted and Niche Advertising will grow
  … just as untargeted mobile advertising will fail materialise. Sticking a banner on a mobile portal is not the way forward for mobile advertising. Neither will the way forward come from PPC (Pay Per Click) models such as Google’s Adwords. The fact remains that the mobile internet experience is not one of search and browse in the same way as a PC.
  Targeted advertising, such as Blyk’s service will be the way forward. Blyk have around 200,000 UK subscribers under 24 years old who receive free calls and SMS in return for receiving advertising content. It’s a clear, simple relationship that both advertisers and the Blyk users know and understand.
  




• The Iphone will become ‘just another phone’
  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been an Apple fan for years … Macs, Ipods etc. They have great products and superb design. The iphone is great too. Well, great for what it is. The fact remains that the iphone is just one product in a smartphone market that represents little more than 20% of users. And in that market there is stiff competition from Blackberry, Nokia and now the Google Phone.
  Underlying this, is the fact that most people want a phone to make calls and send SMS. They don’t want to listen to music or watch videos. That, after all, is what you do at home! Many people do not want to be connected to their email all the time. They actually want to get a way from it.
  I predict that the iphone will be like the Apple Mac – a great product for a niche of highly enthusiastic users. In mobile marketing terms it means that some of the high profile campaigns, such as the Guiness game, will fail to light the imagination of many people. ‘This will change everything’? I don’t think so.

Mobile Email bigger than SMS? I think not!

A senior director at the independent mobile SEVEN has claimed that mobile email will be bigger than SMS. Isabelle Dumont, Senior Director, Marketing at SEVEN said: "email will be the main messaging application on the phone" she said "as users won't be able to use IM or SMS for all communications. This will result in a lot of consolidation around email in terms of user behaviour going towards email."

I totally disagree with this view.

Seven, who represent a small number of users in the UK mobile market, consist of highly active users and early adopters. Inevitably they are the most likely to use email.

Looking at the UK as a whole, the figure is much lower - less than 30% at the last count. It cerainly has grown in the last few years, but why won't everyone be using email instead of the more costly SMS?

There are two principle reasons:

Not everyone wants mobile email
For a majority of people, their phones are for calls and SMS. With the current range of tariffs and phones anyone who wants email on their phone can pretty much have it by now. There may be a few people where cost is the barrier, but unless mobile internet/email is universally free that will always be the case. The remainder have made a choice NOT to have email. I have heard people give all kinds of reasons: I don't need it, I don't want to be disturbed, the handsets are too small.

SMS is easy and contained
I have email on my phone, yet I still send SMS. The reason for that is simple, SMS is immediate. I look at them straight away because I know they will be short. What's more, all of my SMSs are for me - I have no spam (well very little at least).
Dealing with emails, on the other hand takes up much more time. I have to sift through things from Spam, to newsletters before I get to the ones I want. Many of my emails will take a while to download as they have attachments, and others will take a long time to reply to. So, even though I have an always on email connection, I only check it a few times each day, simply because dealing with emails is time consuming.
SMS is not time consuming in the same way. I can read and send them walking along the road. And if I send one I get a reply very quickly.

I am sure that many users feel as I do, which is why I think that email use will not increase that much. My guess would be around 30-35% of mobile users.

Flight Checkin by Mobile

This is the kind of application I love. Lufthansa, the German airline are implementing a check in by SMS system.
Passengers will soon be able to have a complete check in service, including seat allocation and boarding card, through their phone.
The system uses a 2D barcode delivered to their handset which can be scanned to access the departure lounge or other areas.
Click here for more information on Mobile Ticketing.

DMA Mobile Marketing Guide

As part of my role with the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) Mobile Council, I have contributed to a series of help notes which have formed a mobile marketing guide.
These cover all the current tools, such as SMS and Mobile Web as well as emerging tools such as QR (quick recognition), LBS (location based services) and Bluetooth applications.
Each help note explains what the tool or technology is, how it works and some examples of how it has been used.
The guides are free to everyone - click here to go to the DMA Mobile Council site

SMS helps call centres ..

... to improve communicaton and cut costs.
No surprises here, but call centres have found that switching to SMS can greatly improve customer satisfaction. No more waiting in a queue, or navigating a complex IVR system to find out a simple piece of information such as a current balance.
A recent report states that:
'SMS efficiently replaces the need for live agents, as well as IVR systems, for many simple service inquiries including order status, payment reminders, account activity alerts, delivery notifications, security alerts, and more, allowing live agents to spend time on dealing with more complex customer inquiries.'
Systems such as our own txt4ever allow SMS Marketing and SMS Customer Relationships to be easily managed through web-based interfaces or IP-based systems.

Credit Crunch? What Credit Crunch?

The latest figures form the Mobile Data Association (DMS) show a continued rise in SMS during the last quarter. Figure of 6.4 billion messages per month in the UK surpassed both the sector's expectations and the general economic trend. Some of this has undoubtedly come about with the grown in text messaging for business.
At the same time, mobile data - the mobile web - usage has increased to 16.5 million users in the UK, just over a quarter of mobile phone owners.
With greater business application as well, SMS is expected to rise by 30% in 2008.

Maybe it is either too soon or too tenuous to link to the Credit Crunch, however, it would appear that as with some other sectors, an economic contraction may increase SMS. Aside from the fact that many people are using bundles and thus have no opportunity to cut back, for both businesses and consumers SMS can represent a reduction in costs compared to phone calls.

Useful Links

Payforit - mobile billing system
Bluetooth
Bluetooth Unit
QR (quick recognition) Codes

Location Based Services (LBS)

One of the great advantages of mobile phones is that not only do they move around, but in general it is possible to tell where they are. Thus if the mobile user needs to know the local transport information, the nearest cash point, or even the local weather, a service provider should be able to tell them quickly and easily.
Location based services have been available on mobile for some time. But why haven't they taken off?

The answer, as is often the case, is MONEY. In order to get a location 'hit' the service provider must directly or through an aggregator, get an agreement to collect the LBS information from them. Unfortunately all the mobile networks want to charge a monthly minimum for this plus a cost per location hit.
More often than not this is passed on to the user through Premium SMS. The problem is that the users clearly do not value this information enough to pay for it on any grand scale. Even the TfL cabwise service, which allows you to text to recieve information of your nearest licensed taxi, charges 35p to cover their costs.

You may think that by providing this information for free the networks will benefit - better customer relationships, more mobile web usage, higher grade handsets sold etc.
Will the networks ever get to the point where they realise it is better to give away this information than charge for it? I very much doubt it. They only see revenue as the way forward.

There are, however a few examples of LBS which as been funded by advertising. Travel FC is a new LBS giving travel information of all things to Manchester United supporters. And it is sponsored by Manchester United themselves.

The thing that may throw the cat amongst the pigeons is Google. They are currently collection data from users about the position of each mobile mast and reverse engineering their own LBS. Of course Google WILL give this away for free and probably make an API available for anyone to do it. Where that leaves the networks it remains to be seen, but once again a web company has shown the mobile world how things should be done.

Payforit

A great idea for mobile payments has been typically cocked up by the mobile networks money-grabbing approach.

What is Payforit
In short, it is a Wap-based mobile payment system. It works in a similar way to Premium SMS by deducting a payment off the user's phone bill, but is triggered via a wap site, rather than an SMS.

There are two key advantages of Payforit:
A simple click that can be built into a WAP browsing experience
Payments for up to £10 can be taken

This is exactly the kind of thing that I would love to include in our mobile content management platform, immedia24.com

However there are downsides:
The number of mobile users with WAP is small - the latest figures from text.it show WAP browsing levels at around 27% in the UK.
The cost to merchants of offering payforit and the amount that the networks take from each payment.

This last point is the one that will prevent Payforit from being truely ubiquitous. In terms of setting up as a merchant I have been quoted between £250 per month and £1500 per month depending on who you ask. For a new payment system in a relatively new market this is nothing short of outragous. Who would be in a position to risk this, apart from large brands with money to burn?
Similarly the networks are taking a similar chunk of money to Premium SMS - it varies according to the amount taken, but merchants will see little more than 50 or 60% of the payment value after VAT and Network charges.

Compare this to online payments systems such as Paypal or Google checkout, as you will see that they take a relatively small fee for transactions. Even online credit card processors such as Worldpay or Protx charge a small amount each month to their users.

Once again, the networks just don't get it. All they have to do is charge a small amount per transaction and the Payforit system will become a genuine mobile payment system for all.

US starts to get SMS

Has the US started to get the concept of SMS? Subways in the States are now offering discount vouchers by SMS.
Shameless Plug: Our own Mobile Vouchers system has been available through txt4ever.com for two years!
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