Valista Adds Payments Software to Handle Multi-Seller Content Deals

Valista Ltd. says it has developed the first software product capable of handling payments for digital content offered by multiple merchants on the platforms of wireless operators and Internet portals. The payments software, which the Ireland-based company refers to as a “revenue-assurance” solution, allows operators and ISPs to manage payments and chargebacks for such things as games, ring tones, virus protection, and other content from many vendors sold to the same customer. The software keeps track of discounts and other promotional offers affecting value, and distributes payments to all parties according to existing contracts. Valista, whose clients include carriers and ISPs around the world, says it has signed one unnamed client for the product so far. The company expects it will prove increasingly popular as these platforms seek to sell premium services and content, particularly in complex bundles from multiple sellers. “All of these guys want to go away from commodity services and have higher-value touchpoints with consumers,” says Farhad Farzaneh, vice president of products at Valista. Mobile operators are more and more taking on the role of distributors for digital content, he says, fulfilling the same purpose online that a chain like Best Buy fulfills in the physical world. “They have injected themselves into the digital supply chain,” he says. Valista links payments to operators' billing systems but also can connect to card networks and the automated clearing house. In some cases, Farzaneh says, clients who lose customers for basic service will hang on to them for premium content sales, and in that case Valista will handle payment processing. Payments for digital content are often in the micropayments range?around $5 or so?and so require some form of aggregation to avoid the toll interchange costs take on small-value transactions, he says. Valista is offering the new software as part of its OffersPlus suite of products, which it introduced last fall (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 15, 2004) to allow operators and Internet portals to more easily manage complex promotions and discounts for bundles of content coming from multiple vendors. America Online Inc. was one of the first clients for OffersPlus, and has implemented it for its premium-services sales. Valista said in January its transaction volume grew 340% in 2004 over 2003, without giving specific numbers. Farzaneh will say only that current volume is running at “hundreds of thousands” of transactions daily. Besides AOL, clients include Vodafone UK, NTT DoCoMo, and France Telecom's w-HA, among others.