Boku launches Phone-on-File cross-platform carrier billing solution

Phone-on-File is a solution that has been developed with direct carrier approval to provide this functionality and asks the user to provide a standing authorization to the merchant to charge their phone bill up to a specified limit.

For one-time purchases, Phone-on-File is designed to give merchants who use carrier billing the same one-click checkout offered by services like Amazon, without the need for a credit card. The initial sign-up is completed via a one-time SMS authentication and all future purchases are completed in one click.

Because the authorization is provided to the merchant, consumers can use the one-click checkout feature on any platform through which they purchase a merchant’s goods and/or services including desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app.

For subscription purchases, Phone-on-File enables carrier billing to function like credit cards, whereby carrier billing can be accepted as a recurring payment option without the need for subsequent approvals during the subscription period. The technology allows carrier billing to be integrated into the merchant’s existing subscription engines.

The Phone-on-File functionality is currently available in the UK, Germany, Italy and the UK with more markets to be made available in the coming months.

Boku specializes in direct carrier billing-based mobile payments, a form of mobile payment where charges placed online are billed to the users’ wireless phone bill. The technology works for both for pre and post-paid billing plans.

In recent news, Boku has entered a partnership with mobile service provider 3 Hong Kong, the mobile division of Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong (HTHKH).