Bel Baas - premium rate service provider

Dutch company Bel Baas allows companies and individuals to get their own PRS phone number to use for contact with clients. This allows a more broad usage of 0900-numbers for payment of services. While the phone call costs 80 cents to the person who calles, the company/individual that receives the call gets 10 eurocents (when answering the call on their mobile) and 20 eurocents (when answering on a fixed line).

This development illustrates that the solution to e-money issues in the pre-paid mobile operator domain needs to be found on the issuer side of the market rather than the acquiring side. But the acquirers will to take into account the fact that at some point, the issuers requirements for identification will have a consequence for them as well.

Posted by Simon on 13:29 | link

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NTT to give e-money away to stimulate use

NTT Communications Corp, along with 30 or so other companies, is introducing a service that gives electronic money to users who request catalogs or price estimates on corporate websites.

The new service will target users of e-money administered by NTT Communications. Users will first log in at a NTT Communications site and proceed to the sites of participating firms.

Those who make use of specific services, such as requesting materials or making reservations, will receive e-money. The amount of e-money provided will depend on the services used.

Posted by Simon on 15:16 | link

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Conference on e-money in Iran...

E-money is now also spreading to the Far East as the central bank of Iran is organising a conference on its applicability.

Posted by Simon on 15:13 | link

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Preventel: Dutch credit-agency for telecom operators

Preventel is the name of a cooperation between mobile operators. It's goal is to register the identity of mobile-phone customers that have not paid their money to the operator.

This saturday Preventel informed the public that the number of non-payers for mobile services is about 400.000. These are mostly youngsters between 18 and 23 years with a debt of 650 euro. The only luck these have is that after five years they disappear from the system.

Essentially Preventel is the telecom-equivalent of the BKR (the Dutch credit-agency, set up by banks). But although BKR also record the information of mobile phone customers... (under the heading telecom-provision), only T-mobile and Vodafone are participants in BKR.


Posted by Simon on 10:43 | link

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Earthport wins Wanadoo e-money contract

Finextra reports that Internet Service Provider Wanadoo is to use e-wallet software from Earthport to create a portal-wide, stored value micropayments solution for UK customers.

The pre-paid electronic wallet will provide Wanadoo and its merchants with an alternative to Premium Rate SMS as a way to charge for content. The system is also designed to conform to FSA e-money regulations, providing an alternative system, should there be regulation of Premium Rate SMS services in the future.


Posted by Simon on 11:03 | link

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EUROPA - Internal Market - Bank - E-money and Mobile operators - Consultation

The Commission has just published a consultation paper on the scope of the definition of e-money. It considers pre-paid funds of the mobile operators electronic money when used for payments of goods/services to others than the operator. See for more info:
- webpage of EUROPA - Internal Market - Bank - E-money and Mobile operators


Posted by Simon on 17:24 | link

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