Telefonica signs PaymentOne for carrier billing in Germany

Right now it seems like operators are falling over themselves to establish direct carrier billing functionality. Telefónica, which already signed up Boku earlier this week, seems to be spreading its bets through a secondary deal with PaymentOne.

The agreement is limited to the German market, but PaymentOne’s merchant customers can now offer Telefónica Germany subscribers the option to charge services up to €30 directly to their mobile phone bill. The functionality is geared towards one time transactions, recurring subscriptions, in-app billing and web billing.

“Previously, merchants and publishers were not able to reach the many consumers that could not or would not transact with traditional credit cards online,” said Brad Singer, executive vice president of PaymentOne. “Our vision of enabling all consumers to participate in the digital economy still drives the company today. For the more than five billion global consumers with a mobile device, fixed-line or broadband connection, PaymentOne says ‘put your wallet away’ and use your phone number to pay.”

Earlier this week, Telefónica group released a new billing API designed to cater to carrier billing functionality for app developers for Telefónica’s global API program, BlueVia.

The carrier selected online mobile payments firm Boku to support BlueVia’s in app payments with its bank-grade mobile payments technology, reducing the barriers to users for making in-app purchases, which can be linked to mobile operator bills without additional authentication.