The mobile payments company Fortumo is today announcing the launch of Hosted Direct Carrier Billing (HDCB). The new payment product allows any digital content merchant to use the most advanced features of direct carrier billing, including dynamic pricing, 2-step and token based charging as well as recurring payments capabilities.

HDCB is a payment product hosted by Fortumo which provides merchants with a turnkey solution to display and authorize transactions from their users. In the back-end, HDCB is directly connected with clean APIs provided by mobile operators. As a result, merchants can launch direct carrier billing for their customers without needing to negotiate a launch with every carrier separately, develop and maintain checkout flows or manage end-user support. Fortumo also protects merchants from payments fraud through a built-in set of security features and monitoring by a dedicated risk management team.

“Direct carrier billing today competes with card-based payments in segments like gaming, streaming and mobile commerce. This means the commercial and technical level of mobile payments needs to be bank-grade in order for merchants to adopt it. Companies like Google and Spotify have pushed carriers to innovate, but so far the advanced features have been available only to a small segment of digital businesses. As Fortumo is the only provider on the market that can service merchants on scale, we are happy to say that direct carrier billing in its purest form is now available to any digital content provider regardless of their size,” said Martin Koppel, co-founder and CEO of Fortumo.

The main features of Fortumo’s Hosted Direct Carrier Billing product include:

• One integration enables launch across the entire Fortumo direct carrier billing network
• Dynamic pricing, supporting charging users at any price specified by the merchant
• Secure, 2-step and token based charging
• Support for both header enrichment and PIN (OTP) based checkout flows
• Advanced, Fortumo-managed recurring billing capabilities
• White-labeling to match the checkout flow with the merchant’s brand identity

According to the research company Ovum, carrier billing has the potential to generate $142 billion in revenue to mobile operators by 2020. Fortumo believes that an agnostic approach to merchants who can use direct carrier billing will accelerate the growth of the sector seen today. “We see carriers wanting to launch leading digital merchants on their network, but at the same time there are many regional and local companies who wish to do the same. Enabling the long tail revenue for carriers through our payment products ensures a growth in revenue from payment processing,” added Martin Koppel.

Fortumo’s direct carrier billing platform is used by Google Play, Spotify, Sony, HOOQ, Gaana, EA Mobile, Gameloft, Kinguin and thousands of other digital content providers. Fortumo’s platform can be used to collect payments from subscribers of more than 350 mobile operators through one integration.