Brussels, 21 February 2014 – You no longer have to provide your credit card number to buy applications, games, music or e-books on Google Play™. Purchased content can be charged to your mobile phone bill or prepaid card. Mobistar was the first operator in Belgium to successfully launch this easy, secure service in 2013. Five months after the launch, Mobistar customers with Android smartphones have already charged 260,000 applications and games to their mobile phone bill or prepaid card. This means that the revenue objectives for purchases of this type of content on the mobile operator billing platform were exceeded by 200%.
By allowing customers to charge applications, games, music or e-books to their mobile phone bill or prepaid card, Mobistar is clearly meeting a demand for payments without a credit card. Only 1 in 3 Belgian consumers currently has a credit card and more and more consumers are using smartphones and mobile data to buy games, music or e-books from the various app stores.
In August 2013 Mobistar was the first operator in Belgium to launch the mobile operator billing service together with the Mobistar selection, a new category in Google Play offering a selection of the best applications developed for Android smartphones. The launch of this secure payment service was extremely successful.
The evolution of the number of transactions and their resulting revenue has been better than expected. After five months, Mobistar found that a total 260,000 transactions on Google Play went through the secure payment system. Mobistar has also noted that revenue from purchases on Google Play has risen by 42% per month since the launch. The Mobistar customers using the payment platform on Google Play are loyal: 50% of buyers come back every month.
Five months after the launch, 7.5% of Mobistar customers using Android smartphones have linked their Google account to Mobistar’s secure payment system to charge their purchases to their mobile phone bill or prepaid card.
Customers are mainly buying games and apps: 92% of purchases on the mobile operator billing platform are apps and games, with music purchases accounting for 7% and books representing 1% of purchases. The 3 most popular purchases are Candy Crush Saga, Minecraft and Clash of Clans.
Mobistar also noticed the same trend in the use of the Windows Phone Store. One year after the launch, as many as 8.3% of Windows Phone users have purchased content with the Windows Phone Store’s secure payment system.