Carrier billing in Western EuropeMarket report by Fortumo

Overview

Carrier billing in Western Europe

While Western Europe is generally considered a region with strong online payment penetration, numbers tell a different story. In fact, only 38.3% of Europeans have access to bank cards with an e-money function and only 41% of have made an online purchase during the past 3 months. This means merchants are missing out on a significant amount of paying users unless they add alternative and local payment methods like carrier billing and direct debit.

Fortumo’s Western European white paper gives a high-level overview of the biggest markets in the region as well as insights on the carrier billing landscape, user spending behaviour, device preferences and localization. The data presented is from web payments (desktop & mobile - on feature phones, tablets & smartphones) from Fortumo’s cross-platform payment solution.

Markets Overview

Smartphonepenetration

Credit card penetration

Germany 65% 46%

France 66% 44%

Population

81M

66M

United Kingdom 54% 62%

Italy 61% 36%

65M

61M

Spain 66% 54%

Netherlands 72% 34%

46M

17M

Belgium 44% 43%

Greece 45% 12%

11M

11M

GDP percapita

Median ageCountry

Portugal 45% 29%

Sweden 63% 45%

$45,888

$40,375

$39,511

$35,486

$33,711

$47,355

$42,973

$25,859

$26,975

$45,986

10M

10M

46.1

39.7

40.5

44.5

41.6

40.8

43.1

43.5

39.7

41.2

This white paper gives an overview of the mobile payments landscape in Western Europe. It covers 10 of the biggest countries in the region by population: Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Sweden.

Carrier billing landscape in Western Europe

Carrier billing in Western Europe

Maximum transaction size Spending limits

Germany €29.99 €100 per month

France €1050€ per day, 200€ per month

Carriers & Market Share

T-Mobile (33%), Vodafone (32%), E-Plus (16%),O2 (14%), Mobilcom-Debitel (5%)

Orange (40%), SFR (32%), Bouygues (17%), Free Mobile (10%), Virgin Mobile (1%)

United Kingdom 30 GBP (€43) no limit

Italy €15 120€ per day

O2 (30%), Vodafone (25%), T-Mobile (17%), Orange (17%), 3 (11%)

TIM (35%), Vodafone (32%), Wind (23%), 3 (10%)

Spain €7.26 60€ per transaction

Netherlands €5 no limit

Movistar (40%), Vodafone (32%), Orange (22%), Yoigo (6%)

KPN (40%), Vodafone (24%), T-Mobile (23%), Tele2 (5%), others (8%)

Belgium €4 no limit

Greece €5 30€ per day

Proximus (38%), Mobistar (30%), Base (27%), Telenet (5%)

Cosmote (50%), Vodafone (29%), Wind (21%)

Payment types availableCountry

Portugal €4 no limit

Sweden One-off payments, recurring payments200 SEK (€22) 600€ per day

TMN (42%), Vodafone (39%), NOS (19%)

Telia (45%), Tele2 (26%), Telenor (17%), Tre (11%), TDC (1%)

One-off payments, recurring payments

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, assisted subscriptions

One-off payments, recurring payments

Carrier billing in Western Europe

How popular is carrier billing in Europe?While carriers themselves are not too keen to share data on the popularity of carrier billing, their annual reports and Fortumo spending data allows us to estimate the payment method’s reach.

For this estimate, we will use Germany and T-Mobile (largest country & its biggest carrier). T-Mobile’s revenue in Germany from VAS services during 2014 was ~€242 million. Fortumo’s annual ARPPU for 2014 in Germany was ~84.15. Therefore, the estimated number of T-Mobile users who paid via carrier billing was 2.8 million (€242 million divided by €84.15 spent per user).

As T-Mobile had ~29 million consumer subscribers in Germany during 2014, we can say that an estimated 10% of all mobile phone owners pay for goods and services using their phone bill.

Note that the actual popularity of carrier billing is most likely higher: Fortumo ARPPU & retention rates are based on high ticket size digital content and gaming merchants while other carrier billing providers also operate in low ARPPU & retention segments like basic value-added services

Carrier billing in Western Europe

User Spending Behaviour & Platform PreferenceInformation based on web payments (6 months average, January 2015 - June 2015)

Germany

France

United Kingdom

Italy

Spain

Netherlands

Belgium

Greece

Country

Portugal

Sweden

Monthly ARPPU ($)

Average Transaction Size ($)

Desktop MobileTablet

36%

6%

22%

5%

18%

11%

6%

48%

28%

15%

7%

11%

5%

6%

11%

20%

15%

7%

18%

9%

57%

83%

73%

89%

71%

69%

79%

45%

54%

76%

12.29

11.83

25.7

10.73

8.54

6.3

6.22

9.6

6.22

6.14

9.66

5.46

10.22

3.19

4.2

2.57

3.06

3.3

2.63

3.22

GermanyLanguage preferences

74.4% German8.5% English2% Polish15.1% other

FranceLanguage preferences

94% French1.6% English0.9% Portuguese3.5% other

United KingdomLanguage preferences

87.3% English1.9% Polish0.9% German0.9% Arabic9% other

ItalyLanguage preferences

91% Italian5% English1% Romanian3% other

SpainLanguage preferences

89.5% Spanish5.6% English1.4% Catalan3.5% other

NetherlandsLanguage preferences

78.6% Dutch10.2% English2.1% Polish9.1% other

BelgiumLanguage preferences

54% French27.4% Dutch7.5% English11.1% other

GreeceLanguage preferences

85.6% Greek9.5% English0.9% Russian4% other

PortugalLanguage preferences

93.2% Portuguese5.6% English0.4% French0.8% other

SwedenLanguage preferences

73.8% Swedish11.3% English2.7% Arabic12.2% others

Carrier billing in Western Europe

Language & LocalizationInformation based on browser locale (6 months average, January 2015 - June 2015)

Additional reading

Mobile Payments in Central & Eastern Europe

Read now

European carriers and the €26 billion online commerce opportunity

Read now

Swisscom case study: how do mobile operators benefit from direct carrier billing?

Read now

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Fortumo allows any merchant to set up payment processing for web and mobile services, games or apps. Users with a mobile phone are then able to make one-click payments using Fortumo without the need for a credit card: payments are charged to their mobile operator bill instead. Fortumo supports payments in more than 90 countries through 350 mobile operators. Founded in 2007, Fortumo has offices in Estonia, San Francisco, Beijing, Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore and London and is backed by Intel Capital and Greycroft Partners. Get started with mobile payments at https://fortumo.com.

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