Mobile commerce payment providers

Mobile commerce (m-commerce, direct carrier billing) lets a customer pay from their mobile phone balance or add the charge to the monthly phone bill. The customer enters a phone number and confirms with an SMS code or in the operator's app; the operator collects the money and the provider settles the merchant after deducting operator and processing fees. No card or bank account is needed.

Where it is used

On this site mobile commerce is most common in the CIS: Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, where operators expose payment APIs to aggregators. Elsewhere carrier billing is used for app stores, games and subscriptions.

Typical use cases

Digital goods and games: in-game currency, small top-ups.
Content subscriptions and services with small tickets.
Alternative deposit route in markets where card acceptance is limited.

Costs and limits

Carrier billing is expensive compared with cards or SBP: the operator share plus the provider fee can take a large part of the ticket, and rates differ per operator. Transaction and daily limits are low and set by the operator; some tariffs (corporate, prepaid with low balance) block payments. Settlement is slower, as operators pay aggregators on their own cycles. Refund and complaint handling follows operator rules, and operators can block merchants with many complaints.

Mobile commerce vs mobile money

Do not confuse it with mobile money — wallet services like M-Pesa in Africa, where the phone number is linked to a stored-value account rather than a talk-time balance.

What to check with a provider

Which operators are connected and the rate for each.
Allowed content categories and subscription rules.
Settlement frequency, currency and holdbacks.
Payouts are rarely possible on this rail — plan another method for withdrawals.

{count} companies here support mobile commerce. Related: C2C card transfers, PSPs in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. See offers or post a request.