Vodafone Italy has launched a micropayments service for the prepaid customers which initially can their credit to pay for online subscriptions to Italian newspaper La Repubblica. The service costs 2 EUR per week, providing customers with access to the newspaper both online and via a smartphone app.
Ability for this kind of payments (as opposed to credit cards) is critically important in Italy where around 90% of mobile subscribers are prepay customers.
According to Melany Libraro, Vodafone’s head of mobile access at the operator, the goal is to build and commercialize micropayments for all digital media, though at the moment the scheme was still at its “early stages.” In the coming months the operator will make available API for third-party developers, providing them with the opportunity to monetize their mobile content and apps.
Libraro went on talking about how the business is done in Italy: “Prepay is king in Italy and the average money in the wallet of users is very low; you have to give as much away as possible for free – about 90% of our content is free.” However, she also pointed to some success stories, notably Vodafone’s “Calcio” football app which costs 2 EUR per week and which has registered 100,000 downloads to the iPhone, 3,000 to Android devices and 2,000 to the iPad.
[Via: MobileBusinessBriefing]