With increasing regulation in the industry I took myself off to the launch of RegTel’s annual report yesterday in Dublin. George Kidd from ICSTIS made a very informative presentation regarding UK legislation and why ICSTIS will be re-branding to PhonepayPlus.
One of the key points I picked up on was his suggestion that we need to move away from the concept of Premium Rate to that of the mobile device being just another way to pay for something. In my view there are two key issues to this:
1. It can only happen once there is sufficient consumer confidence in the payment mechanism.
This means improving on the current understanding and putting in place more standard mechanisms that consumers become comfortable with. A simple example of this is to promote a wider knowledge that sending STOP to a short code will terminate a subscription service, and in regard to this particular example we welcome RegTel’s current TV campaign. [watch the advert]
2. The second, and I suspect the one which may be more difficult to conquer is the simple fact that the Network Operators currently take a significant proportion of any payment, and until they are willing to reduce this then it’s unlikely we will see retailers shifting away from their regular payment methods to a mobile solution. From a service providers point of view we are firmly committed to working with RegTel and PhonepayPlus, I believe that if we work with regulators to provide increased consumer confidence and protection then we will overcome some of the barriers to growth, all that is left is someone to tackle point 2.