Mobile payments are rapidly becoming a popular way to pay for services. There are a few different methods of making mobile payments. These methods include making on-site payments from your bank account with your phone (using a RFID system that turns your phone into a debit card), setting up a new bank account specifically for making mobile payments and making payments for services that are charged directly to your phone bill. One of the leaders in this last area of mobile payments is Zong. Just how many people are using this type of mobile payment service? A lot! Zong has just announced that they have processed mobile payments for 10 million unique users in 2009 alone.
Zong is specifically designed for businesses who offer online products and services and who would like to accept immediate mobile payment for those services. For example, Zong is frequently used on online gaming sites. A customer can go on the site, find a game that he likes and then enter his mobile phone number in order to complete the billing process. The payment will show up as a charge on the customer’s cell phone bill and he will immediately be able to access his game.
Reasons that people might be interested in using a mobile payment service like Zong include:
- Instant gratification. There’s no waiting for your order to be processed.
- Security / privacy. Many people are comfortable entering their mobile phone number into sites whereas they may be wary of making online payments with a credit card. Zong reports that over two thirds of the people in the global marketplace don’t even have access to a credit card but do have access to a mobile phone.
- Browsers turn into buyers. On the business end, online service providers may want to use Zong because it’s been shown to convert mere browsers into buyers at a rate ten times higher than that of sites that only offer credit card processing. Over 1 billion mobile users can be potentially accessed using Zong.
Why are people using Zong instead of some of the other mobile payment services that are available? Zong’s CEO and founder David Marcus says:
“Our ability to serve 10 million customers already in 2009 was fueled by our understanding of consumer behavior across the social web, the ease-of-use of our pay by mobile solution, our extensive global network of direct carrier relationships and our nine years of operating experience at the nexus of the web, media and mobile content.”
Zong is currently available in 19 countries across one hundred different mobile phone carriers. The company announced today that it will be expanding its reach to new regions including Russia and Eastern Europe, Southeastern Asia and parts of South America. Zong was launched in 2000 and has processed payments from over 25 million unique users during its lifetime. The fact that close to half of those payments were processed this year points to the explosive growth of both the company and of mobile payments in general in 2009.
