Apps Charging phone bill for in-app purchases?

[gabesobol]

Hi everyone,

I am not a developer, I am putting together a business plan and have a question that I can't seem to find an answer to.

I want to have an android application where download is free, but there are purchases made in the app to access some services.

Is there a way I can charge these purchases directly to the persons phone bill? Or easily charge it to the credit card they have on file in the android market?

Or would my app need to get the user to put in their credit card info?

Thank you for taking the time to help!!!

 

[miXer]

I for one would never have downloaded an app like that. If i were to pay for an app i would have done it before downloading it. I hope not there is a easy way to charge a users phone bill instead of getting credit card info. That would have been a massive design flaw, and probably someone would have missused it.

 

[gabesobol]

While I appreciate your input, in all fairness I think that what I would be offering in-app would be more than worth a charge.

Let's say I made it password protected, so we can be sure the person charging the money is the one who has agreed to the charges, is it possible?

 

[CirrusFlyer]

For this to work the handset's carrier would need to support your application programmatically "charging" for something. I am not aware of any carrier currently offering this, but I agree with you - it would be a "nice to have" capablity.

The obvious issue, and the one the carrier needs to guard against, is the application inappropriately billing for something that it shouldn't. How would they do that? By forcing the user to manually enter payment information it leaves little doubt as to what the user's intention was (though it's a PIA to do everytime).

Check with the carriers, though, and see if this is something they plan on offering.

 

[defkorn]

I believe AT&T will be offering a service like this soon, but I don't think it will let you use it the way you intend to. If I remember from the article, it'll just be another option to using google checkout when purchasing apps.

 

[CirrusFlyer]

Good to know about AT&T.

It would be nice if they had something similar to Apple's UX .... enter a user ID / password combination ... and this would hit a standardized API that each carrier exposed that would support this. If the component used to capture the user ID / password was suppied by the carrier they could help ensure it's not data that is being trapped by the vendor's application perhaps, thus providing allot more trust in the overall process and helping to increase the number of apps / services the user is willing to purchase.

Frankly, Google should do this too.

I, for one, have actually skipped buying apps for my EVO because I wasn't sure they were worth the effort of entering the billing info (I'm a lazy consumer). I imagine allot of the apps that sell on Apple's setup are "impulse buys" .... based on the stats you see of how frequently a purchased app is used .... so forcing the user to enter in more than just a couple of values actually has a detrimental effect to revenue generation.

Based on entry here I assume their UX will still require the user to provide regular billing information?

 

[AndroidSPCS]

I'd rather use a credit card. most people don't look at their phone bills and thus potentially have over-spend or buy apps they never inteded.

 

[CirrusFlyer]

It would be good to have a couple of options in my opinion, but I appreciate your point.

 

[CirrusFlyer]

Apparently, T-Mobile is joining the frey too. I also like their idea of a "15 minute refund window" to address the idea that a user may have mistakenly elected to purchase as app ...... Android Developers Blog: More Payment Options in Android Market

 

[Sam Voss]

Apparently, T-Mobile is joining the frey too. I also like their idea of a "15 minute refund window" to address the idea that a user may have mistakenly elected to purchase as app ...... Android Developers Blog: More Payment Options in Android Market

Yeah, Verizon did this too, and its nice, although they used to have like a 1 day(correct me if I'm wrong) turnaround to return an application.

I think that billing in-app would be pretty sweet, although I'm not sure this will be introduced anytime soon.. I hope it is because it will make a lot of things quite a bit better, but it'll take the surcharge off of purchasing an application, so I'm sure google will not be happy with this happening, so I don't see it happening any time soon

 

[CirrusFlyer]

It would seem to me there's an opp here to create a component that other devs could use that provides this functionality. Think about it ... if you have the phone number, the carrier, or other appropriate identifying info you could submit an "in-app charge" as long as you were willing to allow the user to receive a refund within an appropriate time frame.

Would certainly make for an interesting and possibly fun project, though the negotiations with the carriers would probably make a labotomy seem fun.

 

[Sam Voss]

It would seem to me there's an opp here to create a component that other devs could use that provides this functionality. Think about it ... if you have the phone number, the carrier, or other appropriate identifying info you could submit an "in-app charge" as long as you were willing to allow the user to receive a refund within an appropriate time frame.

Would certainly make for an interesting and possibly fun project, though the negotiations with the carriers would probably make a labotomy seem fun.

I think this is a great idea, but after thinking about it for a little bit, there are security risks here, if a malicious application was allowed to do this they could charge hundreds, if not thousands to someones phone bill, and since the person allowed them to do this in permissions, even if they didn't know it, they're still binded to the transaction

 

[CirrusFlyer]

I agree ... thought of the same issues. I think part of the solution is to place specific limiting attributes on the system ... possibly a limit on purchase price, frequency of purchases, total amount purchased during X time frame, etc., etc., etc.

I also think it's appropriate for some type of "receipt" to be sent ... SMS, e-mail, whatever ... to the user, with instructions or a link for requesting a refund.

I obviously have not throught this all the way through yet, but I do think it's possible to address everyone's concerns (if not probable).

 

[Sam Voss]

I agree ... thought of the same issues. I think part of the solution is to place specific limiting attributes on the system ... possibly a limit on purchase price, frequency of purchases, total amount purchased during X time frame, etc., etc., etc.

I also think it's appropriate for some type of "receipt" to be sent ... SMS, e-mail, whatever ... to the user, with instructions or a link for requesting a refund.

I obviously have not throught this all the way through yet, but I do think it's possible to address everyone's concerns (if not probable).

I'm looking forward to this becoming available, then I'll be able to publish a free application and have the option to upgrade (remove ads) via phone bill, because its much more convenient than using your credit card for 99c

 

[AndroidSPCS]

I was looking through my phone bills, the cellular bill statements are becoming obscenely hard to decipher. On top of the endless FCC / Fed / State taxes & Fees, and then the carrier's own fees, and plan options, discounts and additional charges, it's a nightmare to read it all.

The more I think about it, the more I'd not want to put app purchases on my phone bill. Granted it would be nice to have as an option, but I for one would NEVER use it. I'd always prefer it to be billed to my Credit card / Google Checkout or PayPal accounts.

The phone bills are just a huge mess to deal with as is.

 

[CirrusFlyer]

No doubt they do that, in part, on purpose so as to help keep users from taking too hard of a look at their bills. After all, they'd probably prefer you look at and simply "give up" versus it making you want to phone them and asking allot of questions.

My theory and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Sam Voss]

No doubt they do that, in part, on purpose so as to help keep users from taking too hard of a look at their bills. After all, they'd probably prefer you look at and simply "give up" versus it making you want to phone them and asking allot of questions.

My theory and I'm sticking to it.

Great theory, that's also my assumption, because they can tack crap on then, and you'd have no idea because their bills are INCREDIBLY difficult to read