LONDON – Global Adult Billing today announced fourth quarter SMS traffic figures that showed 12 percent growth on Q3 figures. In an economic climate that is seeing most sites conversions decrease, SMS sales continue to rise and are showing a  tendency to continue their upwards trend despite the current economic slowdown. While credit card sales continue to fall, SMS sales are still producing growth.

“More people are reaching credit limits on their cards and are finding it harder to re-finance that credit, as a result a lot more monthly re-bills are failing. Despite this people consider paying there cell phone bill as a monthly ‘essential’ this means that mobile purchasing is one of the easiest ways for these customers to re-subscribe,” sales manager Scott Pattenden said.

For many years, the number one complaint about phone billing centered on the lack of ability to offer subscription billing services. With SMS, that is resolved. It means that just like credit card billing, monthly recurring billing can be set up that even enables limited ‘trials’ which then recur at fixed higher monthly amounts.

SMS billing is offered at a significantly higher price point to cover the fees charged by the mobile network operators (from 20-50 percent depending on the country). When asked why Scott explained “The purpose of SMS billing is to encourage joins from members who currently are un-able or unwilling to use standard billing methods. The end user tariff is normally about 30% higher than the card option, this means program owners can be confident when implementing our billing that they will maintain their margin and that it will not simply divert traffic from their existing payment providers.”

Anyone interested can sign up at www.globaladultbilling.com or contact Scott at scott@globaladultbilling.com.