Mobile Operators
Business Drivers
Click the headers below to see more information on the business drivers for mobile and converged operators.
Off-deck Payments / Multi-party settlement
Off-deck sales already dominate European mobile commerce - reaching 60-70% of total revenues - and North America is rapidly catching up. Content aggregators increasingly serve as off-deck clearing houses enabling content providers to work with multiple operators, and delivering global content to local operators. Mobile operators need to enable off-deck payments processing providing routing, transaction management and authorization, account management, merchant and customer services. By opening up their networks to third parties, mobile operators can offer a wide range of services to their customers which can drive data usage and associated revenues and allows the customer the convenience of being able to charge items to their bill. In addition, a key challenge for mobile operators is to automate the digital commerce process and mange multiple partner relationships effectively and meet time-to-market demands. Today, a significant amount of settlement is calculated manually. As merchandizing models get ever more complex, and with the emergence of advertising sponsored content and services, the need to automate the settlement process is becoming ever more critical.
Direct-to-bill charging, sometimes referred to as WAP billing, provides third parties with a transaction oriented, real time interface to an operator's billing infrastructure. These interfaces are similar to those found in other financial networks and implement a two phase process for authorization, reservation, confirmation and clearance of funds. In addition this process provides support for post purchase operations such as refunds and allows for end-to-end visibility of transactions with significantly reduced revenue leakage as correlation can be retained between the external transactions and the billing transaction. Allowing for real time authorization based on up-to-the-minute funds availability coupled with the non-repudiation provided by greater transparency, reduces the instances of disputes and associated refunds. In the event of a dispute, then end-to-end traceability for each transaction allows the associated refund administration charges to be passed back to the content provider (or the party contractually obliged to carry this cost). The ability to provide automated management of disputes significantly reduces the involvement and cost of customer care without exposing additional risks such as those associated with automated refund systems.
Advanced customer/partner care (PRM)
Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and customer management are key components of Aepona's offering. Easy-to-use self-care applications reduce customer and partner care costs. Consumers manage their own profile, preferences and balances. Partners manage their own profiles, transaction histories, consumer disputes and review reconciliation and financial reports. Aepona's PRM also enables Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to act on behalf of consumers on all issues, but also provides functionality to issue chargebacks and refunds, suspend and terminate users and their payment instruments.
Mobile operators worldwide need to reinforce their brand with differentiated merchandizing tools, including bundling, discounting, promotions and loyalty programs. By moving away from one-off purchases to a subscription model for example, operators can gain a much larger and more consistent revenue stream. In addition, they are increasingly looking at ways to extract additional revenues from players through incentive mechanisms. Merchandizing tools enable operators to provide the widest range of offerings, from pay-per use to subscriptions, and various types of bundles, while executing the revenue-sharing and settlement contracts between the content providers and aggregators. Mobile operators can also drive transaction growth by enabling third party content providers to create more interesting offers for a diverse customer base, without having to invest in any additional technology.
Aepona's Operator Payments Solutions
Making NaaS a reality, Aepona can address the business challenges by providing an infrastructure based on its digital commerce platform the Payments & Settlement Engine (PSE)- for payment handling and management of recurring payment, merchandizing and for calculating the payments from the carrier to third parties (settlement) and vice versa.
Aepona's PSE Payments Module
The PSE Payments Module provides mobile operators with the end-to-end processing required to enable the general digital content market in an on-deck or off-deck environment or a combination of both. It also enables off-deck payments processing for operators facilitating the purchase of physical goods and services using the mobile device e.g. the purchase of cinema offers, car parking etc. using multiple payment options including direct-to-bill, premium SMS, debit/credit card, stored value, loyalty points, gift cards etc.
Aepona's PSE Settlement Module
The PSE Settlement Module seamlessly handles the revenue sharing and settlement requirements for all parties involved in a transaction, supporting the various contracts that operators can have with other participants so that the financial operations processes can be executed automatically.
Aepona's PSE Merchandizing Modules
The PSE Merchandizing Module consists of a number of modules which enable merchant on-boarding, bundling, subscriptions, promotions, discounting and loyalty programs, providing more ways for operators to package content and provide incentives for subscribers to buy more digital content or physical goods using the mobile device. When used with the payment module, it also ensures consumer protection through the use of per-merchant spend limits and an advice of charge feature which makes the consumer aware of exactly what they are purchasing.
Aepona's platforms are designed to operate in a hosted environment, an option that is very attractive to some operators. Aepona's next generation Operator Payments Service acts as a bridge between the external parties and the operator's billing infrastructure. With such a bridge in place, operators are then able to support controlled billing access, support the full range of access channels and interaction models, provide for proper consumer protection and experience, and scale their off-deck content business in an operationally efficient and profitable manner.
Aepona's Operator Payments Solutions enables mobile operators to accelerate the growth of premium content, physical goods and services adoption for on-deck and more open eco-systems (off-deck). These solutions are available as licensed software or as a managed services offering.
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