Zong, a mobile payment company that allows consumers to pay for digital goods and services through their phone bills in dozens of countries worldwide, just published some interesting stats about its growth in usage in 40 countries. Though the stats are limited only to Zong’s consumers and their usage of the Zong service (excluding mobile payment services offered by all other providers) it still shows the impressive growth of consumer adoption of mobile payments within the past year –since January 2010.
Highlights of the stats include:
1. The global aggregate index shows that the average monthly spend using Zong is up 37% in the last 12 months. This increase is broadly due to an increase in available Zong merchant locations, lower transaction fees and higher spending limits set by mobile operators.
2. Total spend more than doubled in the last 12 months in Canada, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany and The Netherlands due to operators enabling Zong to increase the maximum billing amount per transaction.
3. In the US, the monthly spend per user decreased by 8% from January 2011 to February 2011. This was primarily driven by a top tier carrier temporarily decreasing the monthly spending limit from $100 to $25. We expect the monthly spend to recover as the limit has increased back to $100.
Zong’s service is very intuitive to consumers, as the company works with merchants and mobile network operators to handle the complexity in the bag stage. The service generates a one-time use payment code on demand so consumers are able to make payments at Zong’s partner merchants including Facebook and IMVU (an avatar-based social network and virtual world where people meet and interact in 3D). The charge is billed to the consumer’s monthly mobile bills.
Read the original story here: http://www.zong.com/about/zong-payment-index