[Watch] Enhancing User Experience: The Road to Seamless Transactions
By Simon Best
Last month I was delighted to speak at the MEF Global Forum ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Alongside Ross Flynn from MEF, Christopher Henseler from Mesh Ads, and Mahmoud Hanadi from Sam Media we discussed the topic of ‘Enhancing the user experience: The road to seamless transactions.’
As a developer of e-commerce and bookings and payments software for small businesses in over 40 markets with BaseKit, effortlessness and simplicity is at the core of everything we do. Small businesses are time poor so seamless transactions are invaluable, however digital education has a large part to play in how quickly we can enhance user experiences.
I was keen to share my opinion on the role of Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) in the golden age of seamless transactions, through the lens of small businesses, and also how seamless payments can be taken on a global stage.
Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) is an online payment method that allows consumers to charge the cost of a purchase or transaction to their mobile phone bill. This makes paying for things quick and seamless which has huge advantages particularly for in-app purchases, and it’s one of many one-click payment methods that are now more prominent in the payments space.
Accoridng to Statista, the global DCB market is forecast to more than double between 2021 and 2025. GSMA also reported in Q3 2021, that there were over five billion unique mobile subscribers from a global population of over 7.5 billion people, but less than 20% of the population have a credit card. That’s a huge population who could stand to have their lives transformed by DCB and advancements in other seamless transactions.
At BaseKit we work with partners who resell our software around the world. We try to create the simplest end-to-end customer experience that caters for many different territories, but is flexible enough to localise fundamental differences in market demand. One such demand is payment methods tailored to the needs and digital sophistication and education of consumers.
We have to ensure payment methods are merchant centric, so that they are seamless to set up for our partners’ customers, and seamless to use for their customers’ customers. That means, they don’t act as a barrier to someone setting up a business online, or being able to provide attractive payment methods to their customers.
Each partner requests a very specific payment type to be set up on our Platform that makes the most sense for their customers. There’s no one size fits all approach. Payment methods are localised and vary widely by territory. For example, we have found that payment services using credit and debit cards are the most common in Europe and the US, whilst we see more mobile based payment methods in Africa and Asia.
Currently we don’t see one payment technology that is dominating market share.
When it comes to DCB, I am aware that there are intricacies currently with merchant set up, which may still act as a barrier for small businesses using it in certain markets, even though it could well be one of the most seamless payment methods there is.
For those partners in territories that cater to a population with high mobile penetration , and low credit/debit card usage, such as Africa or Asia, DCB could transform the e-commerce space for new entrepreneurs looking to start a business to sell goods online. However, technology transformation must go hand in hand with digital education.
As we continue to serve our partners’ customers in many world markets, we can see that the sophistication of digital education can act as a barrier to seamless transactions. A localised and clear approach to creating and continually advancing a seamless experience is therefore vital to protect customers and mitigate risk associated with confusion over misinformation and lack of education.
Currently DCB is also subject to extremely high fees (as much as 50% in some cases) which limits its application to high-margin digital products. It’s not yet feasible to use DCB for selling most physical products, but this may change in the future as DCB becomes more established and fees reduce in line with other payment types.
However, many of our partners are carriers themselves, and the fact that it is the carriers that manage the payments, means they make their own money and won’t lose revenue to competitor payment methods, giving DCB an appealing edge on other online payment methods.
One click payments can also open up more risk of fraud, technical fraud and manipulation fraud – coercion with misinformation, however when payment integrations are handled by a Platform like BaseKit, we can de-risk that fraud for our partners’ customers to a degree by handling integration risks for them.
This makes one click payments readily available to use without the need for customers setting it up themselves. It also provides them with a more seamless and single branded experience, that is so important for our partners to offer their customers.
Technology moves fast. I believe one click payments will become much easier to set up, and easier to afford, as open ecosystems and revenue share options break down barriers and carriers become receptive to the advancement of DCB and the fast subscription uptake it affords.
BaseKit will be watching the advancement of DCB for our partners and their customers, and we will continue to ensure we present the right information to customers throughout their digital experience to help bring clarity and transparency to the seamlessness of the transactions they make.
I believe seamless transactions are the future, and as they advance, it will be up to carriers and vendors to act on behalf of their customers and partners to keep risk at bay and simplicity and education at the forefront of advancement, as seamless transactions pave their way in different markets and enhance the user experience for all.