T-Mobile USA Inc. is the latest wireless carrier to allow its subscribers to charge purchases of online games, songs and videos to their phone bills.
The Bellevue, Wash., subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG said Tuesday that it struck deals with several providers of so-called carrier billing services to offer the capability to customers.
"As the growth in mobile purchasing explodes, we want to be at the forefront in helping customers more easily purchase digital content and services," Brad Duea, the senior vice president of value added services at T-Mobile USA, said in a press release.
T-Mobile's Direct Carrier Billing service is expected to be available later this month and builds on an earlier version it offered to customers through Google Inc.'s Android Market. The expansion will allow customers to bill purchases made from a web browser on their computer, smartphone and other devices.
"With this new program, we're extending the hassle-free payment experience to browser-based purchases from virtually any online source and across a variety of mobile devices, delivering more purchasing power to mobile-centric consumers," Duea said.
T-Mobile said it is working with Danal Inc.'s BilltoMobile, Boku Inc., OpenMarket Inc., Payfone Inc. and Zong Inc., which is being acquired by eBay Inc., to offer the service to customers.
Such services are most commonly used to allow consumers to pay for features within games, virtual content on social networks and other multimedia content. Other carriers, including AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. offer their own versions of the service.
Carrier billing is projected to be one of the fastest growing segments of the burgeoning mobile payments industry.
The gross dollar volume of U.S. carrier billing transactions is expected to reach $7.6 billion in 2015, up from $600 million in 2010, according to report released in November by Aite Group LLC.
The dollar value of the overall U.S. mobile payments industry is expected to reach $214 billion, up from $16 billion in 2010.
