“What Simpay is all about is opening up the mobile Internet space beyond the carrier’s branded portal,” said Jim Wadsworth, Simpay’s chief marketing officer.
Described as a mobile-commerce company, Simpay’s real purpose is to create a common billing mechanism for carriers and wireless content providers. In Europe, companies selling ring tones, games and other content have three main distribution methods: a carrier deal that will put them on a carrier’s branded portal, a service that can bill users through premium text messages, and a WAP site to process credit cards. Simpay is looking to become the fourth option for Europe’s content industry.
“The potential of the mobile Internet is primarily off portal,” Wadsworth said. “It’s all about opening up the space.”
First announced in February 2003, Simpay is essentially a joint billing venture among European carriers Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles and Vodafone. Although each carrier manages its own wireless data portal-such as Vodafone’s Live! gateway-Simpay will support direct-billing services for content purchases outside of those portals. Thus, users will be able to buy content like ring tones and graphics on WAP sites outside of their carrier’s purview and, through Simpay, have those charges billed directly to their service account-just like purchases made inside their carrier’s portal.
The system would provide an alternative billing mechanism to premium text messages and credit cards. Wadsworth said premium text messaging is a complicated billing format and only supports a select few price levels. Further, the setup of premium text messages differs across the various countries in Europe-forcing content providers to modify their content according to geographic locale-and also can be prone to fraud. Credit cards aren’t much better-they are a notoriously ineffective billing method as wireless users rarely have the motivation or confidence to enter their account numbers using their phones.
Under the system, a content provider would register with Simpay, and Simpay would act as the go-between for the content provider and wireless carrier. Users surfing onto participating WAP sites would be able to bill their content purchases directly to their service accounts by clicking on the Simpay logo.
“We will have consistent rules of the game,” Wadsworth said.
However, content providers that decide to play by Simpay’s rules would be subject to the revenue-sharing contracts of Simpay’s wireless carriers.
Thus, between 20 and 50 percent of the revenues generated from content sales would be directed back to the buyer’s carrier. Credit-card and premium text billing scenarios typically funnel more or all of the revenues to content providers.
Simpay is scheduled to offer trial services later this year, and then launch commercial services early next year. Further, 3G carrier 3, Debitel, Elisa (previously Radiolinja), KPN Mobile, Mobilkom, MmO2, Optimus, SFR, TeliaSonera and TMN have expressed interest in joining the Simpay effort.
