direct carrier billing

Article written by Evina

THE DCB STORY HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW

Mobile operators the world over will recognise the beginning of the story we outline below. Few, however, ever pay attention to how it ends. Let’s begin…

Our story starts in those early, euphoric days of Direct Carrier Billing. Back then, DCB seemed to be the ideal business opportunity for cash-hungry Mobile Network Operators experiencing the effects of declining Average Revenue Per User.

DCB appeared easy to implement, with high margins, and was very much in demand by merchants for its high acquisition rates. Suddenly, mobile operators were payment operators and the sky seemed to be the limit.

Unfortunately, the rash of consumer complaints that followed this honeymoon period very quickly exploded the payments bubble. Anxious to preserve their image and tired of dealing with complaints, the MNOs saw no choice but to severely restrict the use of DCB.

Now this is where many operators believe the story ends and that’s a real tragedy. DCB is far from just another empty pot of gold in a long list of mobile mirages.

Testimony to this is the fact that some forward-thinking MNOs recognised DCB for the promising mobile opportunity that it remained and decided to see where they could go with it.

These innovators blazed a trail and reaped the rewards. Their experiments with refining DCB saw their complaint rates collapse and their revenues increase sharply. We saw this with Proximus in Belgium and Bouygues in France. So, what happened and how did they do it?

Firstly, these operators clearly identified the problem which is the proper starting point in successfully overcoming any challenge. They realised that high complaint rates were not, most of the time, due to dishonest merchants or payment aggregators fleecing an efficient payment system.

Quite the opposite. It turned out that merchants and aggregators were likewise the victims of massive fraud. While fraud is to be expected in any monetary system, the good news is that it is not an insurmountable problem. It can be managed in DCB, just as it is managed in the credit card ecosystem.

Secondly, successful MNOs like the two mentioned above recognise that only fraud experts can beat fraudsters. And we’re not talking about just any, run-of-the-mill experts. Too many generalist companies sell what should be anti-fraud solutions offered by specialists. Even fraudsters sell anti-fraud solutions. Clearly, this is untenable.

In order to be properly secured, MNOs need to be protected by a specialist anti-fraud expert that meets three essential criteria:
·      Independence – The solution cannot belong to an advertiser so there is never any doubt as to why a transaction is validated or refused.
·      Cybersecurity focus – Too many players in the sector are unable to do all the services they provide equally well.
·      Expertise in fraud – The world of mobile payment fraud is a unique environment that requires specific expertise that can only be the result of extended practical experience and serious R&D.

By collaborating with Evina, Proximus and Bouygues soon realised their new specialist anti-fraud provider ticked all the boxes above. The result was that, for them, DCB became the wonderful opportunity it was meant to be from the very beginning.

To explain to all operators how to take full advantage of DCB, and make it a source of substantial profit, we have just published a case study detailing our collaboration with Proximus, including a study of the impact on their revenues and their complaint rate.

It can be freely downloaded here: https://docs.evina.com/case-study-proximus-x-evina

This case study reinforces one of our strongest convictions: by approaching fraud in the right way, DCB can be transformed from the payment method of the past to that of the future.