US wireless carrier Sprint is working with payments start-up BilltoMobile to offer customers the ability to charge online purchses direct to their mobile phone bill, cutting out banks and credit card companies.
Once implementation is complete in the coming months, merchants and payment resellers using BilltoMobile's mobile payment service will be able to offer this payment option to Sprint customers.
The deal follows the recent release of the Sprint mobile wallet, which aggregates payment methods and makes them available as one-click payment options on a user's mobile phone.
For BilltoMobile, the Spring agreement overall reach to more than 240 million wireless subscribers in the US across multiple carriers and follows recent deals with Verizon and AT&T.
The vendor says its billing platform requires no registration, no set up, no application or downloads and no association with other financial instruments such as credit or bank cards. Purchases are completed in seconds using a two-step authentication process, and customers don't have to expose any sensitive account information while using the service.
Denise Archer, vice president of carrier partnerships, BilltoMobile, says: "BilltoMobile is the only mobile payments gateway that can offer online digital goods and services merchants the technology infrastructure and broad consumer reach necessary to provide customers with a viable mobile payment option."