The nine-year-old company has partnered with Britain’s mENABLE to provide the new billing option, which allows surfers to pay for content via their mobile phone bill.
“SMS is huge in Europe,” Mansion Productions president Gary Oiem told XBiz from Norway. “I saw checkbooks when I was younger, but never used checks until I came to the United States. Hardly anyone uses credit cards or checks to pay in Europe.”
MENABLE’s SMS option can be used by webmasters offering premium content or for services including access and memberships, by online merchants and for content such as online games and MP3 downloads. Oiem said that MPA3 is the first affiliate services provider to offer this payment plan.
“In Europe,” Oiem said, “you can use your phone to buy a Coke.”
Oiem believes that European telecomm monopolies drive innovation, explaining why cellphone reception is better in Europe and why utilities like text-messaging and SMS billing are not as popular in the United States.
“You are about three years behind,” he said.
Mansion Productions CEO Oystein Wright agreed, saying that SMS billing is only just catching on in the U.S. He pointed to the manageability of SMS billing in its easy handling of a country's content restrictions.
“[We offer] a more discreet and anonymous payment method than debit or credit cards. With the MPA3’s s geo IP tracking the program owners can set it so that only the surfers coming from Europe or what ever country they wish for will get to pay with the SMS option.”
The mENABLE partnership has been in development for over two months, Oiem said, and is being offered to webmasters this week. He expects signups to grow exponentially due to the ease of use and privacy of SMS.
“If you want European signups,” he told XBiz, “this it it.”