Member News

On June 26th AIME’s inaugural Payforit Summit ( payforitsummit.com ) will take place in central London to help UK businesses learn more about the growing mobile billing opportunity for digital services. The Summit will explain how Payforit can help UK businesses increase revenues and tap into a new consumer audience and will provide hints, tips, experts and case studies on Payforit.

With support from all the UK’s mobile network operators O2, EE, Three and Vodafone the event, held at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, just round the corner from Charing Cross train station, will provide an introduction into mobile billing for any business that is keen to target the UK’s growing smartphone and mobile-savvy audience.

“The number of consumers with a mobile phone on them at any time is almost as high as the number with cash on them at any time. While for many online and mobile purchases mobile billing is becoming far more convenient than using cards,” said Toby Padgham, AIME Director. “The Payforit Summit will provide business growth opportunities for merchants looking to monetise their digital services using the online payment mechanism Payforit.”

Payforit, the service that allows consumers to pay for digital goods and services directly from their mobile phone and is fully backed by all the UK mobile operators, is growing very quickly. Recent figures from AIME show Payforit revenues grew by 25% in 2012.

Jay Saw, Business Development Director at Nomad Digital ( www.nomadrail.co.uk ), the global leader for WiFi on trains, commented, “We’ve been using Payforit for over 18 months as one of the payment options for rail passengers wishing to access our WiFi service. We found that many customers don’t have or don’t always want to use credit cards for this type of small, infrequent transaction, so Payforit provides a convenient alternative. Over the last 18 months we’ve seen the number of Payforit transactions continually grow indicating that it is growing in its appeal as a method of payment.”

“This event offers the perfect opportunity for businesses from sectors as diverse as publishing or mobile gaming to understand how mobile billing and Payforit specifically can help them grow and create increased revenue,” continued Padgham.

For the increasing number of merchants that are already using Payforit, the Summit will offer more details about the future developments of the service, as well as sessions on how to use Payforit to increase the number of customers and transactions for the merchant.

Following the Summit itself there will be networking drinks and a time for the attendees to mix and chat with fellow professionals and the mobile operators.

The Oxygen8 Group has announced that it will be working with Edinburgh Airport, one of the busiest airports in the UK, to support staff with their inbound voice communications.

Oxygen8 will be implementing its leading call handling solution, Direct Control Voice, which will allow the airport to manage and measure its call activity, which averages half a million minutes a year. Edinburgh Airport wanted to improve response times and eliminate the inflexible nature of its Interactive Voice Response ( IVR ) system. Introducing Direct Control Voice provides the airport with a more effective and timely way to make changes to its own IVR and call handling services.

Edinburgh Airport was particularly impressed with the solution’s capacity to allow it to make immediate changes to call routing and call flow management. This capability provides the airport with more control when communicating airport notifications, flight cancellations and poor weather alerts via IVR. In the instance of website downtime the solution will provide an effective continual flow of communication with customers, allowing the airport to respond to changes quickly.

James Harrison, UK Country Manager of Oxygen8 Group commented: “We are delighted to be working with Edinburgh Airport as Direct Control Voice will offer massive value to them during times of disruption. By providing scope, flexibility, detailed reporting and anywhere, anytime accessibility to make changes to updates and recordings, the airport will have peace of mind that it will be able to provide a consistent flow of communication at all times.”

Mobile aggregator and AIME sponsor member txtNation have partnered with Europe’s largest supplier of NFC tags and products, RapidNFC, to become the first to offer direct operator billing via NFC technology.

Using NFC tags, compatible mobile phones can scan the tag, launching a tailored payment interface. The user simply confirms payment and is billed. Users browsing via WiFi, rather than their mobile data plan, are prompted to enter their mobile number to continue payment.

The NFC tags are tiny microchips which RapidNFC can incorporate into a wide selection of products from stickers, smart posters and wristbands to promotional items such as pens, key fobs, bar mats and various other merchandise.

Whilst other NFC methods exist, txtNation have introduced a solution without any complicated signup process. Without additional linking of a phone to a bank account,card payment or by entering a username or password, users can be billed with txtNation’s solution with a quick NFC tap and a one-click confirmation on a mobile Web page.

Through their 3G or 4G connections, a user is charged securely and quickly to their monthly mobile contract or pay-as-you-go balance.
The solution works in any country where carriers support MSISDN pass-through, so the user can enjoy “one-click billing”. To kickstart this new solution, txtNation have been trialling it with Payforit, the UK’s latest and most prominent direct carrier billing scheme.

Popular already for charity donations, the solution has potential for event ticketing and even tangible goods. It could be used through a point-of-sale terminal, or the merchant’s PC, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.
txtNation Director and co-founder Jon Rowsell said ‘it’s great to be first to market with this. It’s something we’ve been conceptualizing for a while and to be able to finally offer NFC, combined with carrier billing, for those early end user and merchant adopters, means that anyone with an NFC-enabled phone in the UK can use this. More and more phones are coming with NFC enabled, and clients are wanting to take advantage of this impressive technology.’

He adds ‘It is expected that NFC will become a mass market payment system, with the likes of weve.com or or Visa’s payWave app coming on stream. txtNation’s solution, however, is available today without the need for further consolidation in the market or increased cooperation between operators. txtNation has pioneered mobile billing and messaging over the past 10 years and is proud to be at the forefront of what promises to be a popular payment method.’

Direct Carrier Billing through a user’s mobile network, unlike questionable bank-linked NFC, means there is an SMS confirmation for every transaction made, boosting consumer confidence and giving true billing transparency.

Consumers and businesses alike want an easy-to-use system that requires no user registration, providing friction-free, one-touch billing. txtNation and RapidNFC can provide this today, so clients can instantly deploy and get started in an exciting new sector.

“We’ve been approached by a number of clients looking for a quick and simple way of making NFC payments” says Phil Coote, CEO of RapidNFC, “and to date we haven’t been able to recommend anything as there has been nothing in the market worth shouting about. When txtNation approached us with this concept we immediately knew this was going to be a ground breaking product, and set to work on a prototype. The result is fantastic, nothing like we have seen before and so easy for clients to deploy to accept payments from not only all those with NFC on their handsets, but anyone with a mobile internet browser.”

txtNation are offering interested businesses the chance to try the service for free, by providing an NFC payment sticker to their door, by emailing Kelli Smith, Corporate Affairs; k.smith@txtnation.com with your company name, postal address and where you would like to deploy NFC billing, and txtNation will deliver you an NFC tag pre-encoded with their billing solution.

Spoke, consumer engagement and social TV experts, today announced winning a further 3 year contract with digame mobile, to work on the Eurovision Song Contest. Spoke provide live interactive vote management of UK voice votes from the semi final and final which will be aired on 16th and 18th May, 2013.

The 58th Eurovision will be hosted in Malmo, Sweden and broadcast all over the world. The BBC will be broadcasting the program in the UK, which will be hosted by Graham Norton. This year’s UK representative has been confirmed as Bonnie Tyler, who gained international success in the eighties for hits such as Total Eclipse of the Heart, with the song Believe in Me.

Spoke will aggregate UK votes in real-time across multiple platforms, including IVR and Voice Short Codes. This year will be the first time that Voice Short Codes are used on Eurovision, enabling transparent pricing for mobile phone votes. Spoke will be integrating their Vote Command platform with Eurovision’s own system and ensuring compliance for all UK votes.

Thomas Niedermeyer, Director International Project Management at digame mobile commented, “Spoke bring years of experience and expertise in live vote management, which is essential because Eurovision runs across numerous countries and is therefore more technically complex than most votes, so it requires excellence in all the vote rooms across Europe. The team at Spoke have been very professional since we started working with them in 2010 and so we’re very happy to have them on board for another three years.”

Automated Donation Services from Spoke help supporters to donate quickly and securely to the DEC Appeal for the Syria Crisis.

Spoke, the consumer engagement experts, are proud to be supporting the Disasters Emergency Committee ( DEC ) in their latest appeal for the Syria crisis, providing the automated donation services which enable supporters to donate quickly and securely and help those affected by the disaster.

Disasters Emergency Committee unites 14 of the UK’s leading aid agencies such as Oxfam, the British Red Cross and Save the Children, in times of a humanitarian disaster when a large scale response is called for. The latest appeal is for the Syria Crisis, where over five million people are in need of aid and huge numbers of people are fleeing their homes and the country. Over one million are now believed to have arrived in neighbouring countries and conditions are worsening day by day

Spoke’s expertise in interactive donation solutions comes with years of experience working with charities such as Comic Relief, UNICEF, Depression Alliance and Save the Children, as well as live donation management for events such as Red Nose Day and Sport Relief. Spoke’s automated donation technology enables card payments to be processed to PCIDSS level 1, with its partners Eckoh and BT, so that donors are assured of a rapid and highly secure method of donating funds. All donations for the Syria Appeal are processed and received by the DEC in the shortest possible time, allowing the DEC, through its network of member agencies to deploy the aid to alleviate suffering at the earliest opportunity.

Helen Calder, of the DEC commented: “As with any DEC appeal , the highest level of donation security and processing speed is essential, enabling us to act quickly to support the millions of people suffering in Syria. Spoke have processed a significant amount of donations over the past few weeks, contributing to the £7.4million raised to date. We know we can rely on Spoke’s services, along with the support of the public, to help those affected in this ongoing crisis.”

Rob Ellis, Managing Director of Spoke commented: “We’re proud to have helped the DEC on previous appeals and so it’s an honour to be able to support them again for such an important project. Their work in the Syria Crisis Appeal is essential and so the speed and reliability of our technology allows us to process the generous donations from the public as quickly as possible, contributing to the speed in which aid gets to all those affected.”