So here’s where the magic really happens! The Telemedia industry has the ability to not only deliver but, more importantly to collect payments [for services]that “connected customers” perceive as having a tangible billable value. Since these propositions are generally marketed and sold “remotely” – where there is no established billing relationship between the merchant / promoter and the customer – the charge is assigned to their phone number. In this scenario, specialist service providers or aggregators provide the commercial link between the networks (who collect payment) and the content and marketing partners - who then take their share of the transaction.

The telemedia industry has the technical ability to generate and switch very high volumes of premium billed voice and data traffic – with each minute or message carrying a relatively small unit price. This is one of the industry’s greatest assets; the provision of micropayment solutions that, by their very nature carry a relatively low “pain threshold” for consumers. These transactions are generally not suited to credit card processing and in many emerging markets the consumer might not even have a bank account / payment card to use.

So fundamentally the ability to collect payments in a wide variety of ways including Payforit, PSMS, drop charge, PRS and other “charge2mobile” solutions - provides the key to driving value added services and monetising content. So in this section we’ll not only report on technical and commercial innovations but also the ever present “issues” surrounding compliance and regulation.