 I had a look at the smscoin site to see what the split is.... am I being stupid or can the site owner never make more that 45% of the total abount charged to a customer?
Ok, so it is a very handy and convienient service... but to loose 55% profit for payment processing?
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I see from their fee schedule that site owners based in the United States only get 25% of the gross payment. So if you live a country where you only loose 55% you are lucky, if you live in the USA, you would loose 75%! I understand that billing to phone is expensive for the processors since the mobile service providers charge hefty fees to process the transaction. |
Making $2.50 from a $10.00 product doesn't sound too bad. BoonEx Certified Host: Zarconia.net - Fully Supported Shared and Dedicated for Dolphin |
I've been working with smscoin for almost 3 years now and the payout shares also puzzled me in the very beginning. I studied the issue and here it is: each short code in each country belongs to mobile carrier which launches them especially for making additional profit. Mobile carriers set the price for each short code as well. So when providing access to projects like smscoin, they set a % they want to leave for themselves from each of the short codes. smscoin's share is 5% maximum, the rest is left with mobile carriers. I'd like to add that smscoin provides really nice shares among similar services. Besides, their payout terms are definitely the best - net 15, which means that you receive your share within 15 days after the end of each month. |
I can understand this... and it would be a great system to use for something like a dating site etc.... but to loose 50-75% of your proffits as a business is madness.... You would be better to use paypal and then spend 75:% of your business proffits on marketing.....
Surely there must be a better way of using an sms system that is not financial suicide for businesses? |
Well, in fact, it depends on your business. SMS-payment is the best solution for selling virtual goods, like in-game currency, pictures, ringtones, etc. |
I have virtual goods and I sell credit packages so i loose 0% on every transaction unless i decide to odffer a discount....
Dont get me wrong.... I think the sms idea is very sound and very logical and very convienient.... Its just way over priced I think.... If there was a better alternative that didnt feel like robbery i would probably use it. |
its not a mattrer of smscoin but all premium sms providers ..all premium sms providers have high rates, but its not all their profit, they have to pay a big part to a mobile operators. Yes your profit is not greatest however in some countries ( for example in whole eastern europe) people are not used to use paypal or creditcard but they rather pay by sms as its fast and cant be misused ( many people are afraid use paypal or enter CC details even throught secured gateways ) . Fast, quick, feel safe,immediate activation - almost everybody have mobile...people in eastern europe simply love sms payments for micropayments
For example here in CZ I can have actually much more profit with sms payment than if I use paypal or creditcard. I agree for western europe where are people more used to paypal and CC payments its a bit worse but in eastern europe sms payment especially for dating sites clearly totaly wins as you have much more people who join your site. For example all dating sites here in CZ are only using sms payments ... I also gonna use on my upcoming dating site sms payment only as if I use CC or paypal simply nobody join my site here... |
