In the next five years, the proportion of digital content paid for via carrier billing is expected to double and consumer spend could treble, according to new research from Juniper Research.
The Direct Carrier Billing: Forecasts, Player Strategies & Emerging Opportunities 2019-2024 study finds that with most leading app stores and content providers now looking to enable carrier billing as an option, consumer spend via this mechanism is set to almost treble from $28 billion (€24 billion) last year to nearly $90 billion (€81 billion) by 2024.
The report notes that carrier billing is beneficial to both operators and content publishers, allowing the former to generate a revenue stream from content while enabling the latter to gain subscribers by using carrier marketing channels.
Impulse spending
The research argues that the option will probably be a major facilitator of end-user content spend in regions such as Latin America and India. In markets like the US, where credit cards predominate, ease of use and the growing availability of carrier billing are likely to see it being increasingly used for content subscriptions and impulse purchases. As a result, US carrier billed spend is expected to more than double to $8.6 billion (€7.6 billion) by 2024.
Fraud risk
However, the research cautioned that for industry stakeholders to maximise the scale of their opportunities, they need to ensure that measures are in place to reduce the risk of fraud.
Research author Dr Windsor Holden commented, “Customers, whose personal data is compromised by techniques such as clickjacking or iframe masking, will understandably be extremely reluctant to browse and buy content in the future.”