API Carrier Billing: how to optimise your applications with more agile and secure payment methods

Carrier Billing is a payment method that allows digital purchases to be billed directly to the user’s account with their phone. This is a more convenient and secure option that eliminates the need to use traditional payment methods. As a result, demand for them is growing exponentially and will continue to do so in the coming years, with a 37% increase by 2026. 

Through the Telefónica Open Gateway initiative, we turn our networks into developer-ready platforms, so that developers can extend their digital services with advanced functionalities such as this one. By doing so, we expose our telco capabilities through global, automated and programmable APIs with a single code line. Among these standardised solutions under the CAMERA framework is the Carrier Billing API, which helps improve customer protection, simplify payments and streamline processes.

The Carrier Billing API is a tool that makes it easy to purchase digital services and products through the mobile line. It functions like a bridge between the application, the company that offers the content and the mobile operator. This allows you to make a quick and convenient purchase without having to enter your bank or credit card details. 

The integration of this API makes it possible for applications to interact directly with the network operator’s systems, ensuring more accurate and secure billing. Likewise, the components work together to simplify the processing of purchases, optimise payment processes and improve user experiences.

Thanks to this interface, developers of digital applications and services incorporate payment functionalities into the software and offer new ways of shopping through Carrier Billing. It also helps to manage the entire lifecycle of the entity: creation, authorisation, capture and, finally, cancellation.

The combination of the most advanced technology and Telefónica’s experience in the financial sector has led us to explore solutions to achieve an optimised payment on the Kanto’s platform. Due to the standardisation of payment capabilities with the Carrier Billing API, the shopping experience is easier and the risk of fraud is reduced by having the possibility to charge the premium subscription to the operator’s bill. This means that the user does not have to enter any personal or bank details, increasing security and simplifying the transaction process.

This is just one example of an application, but it also offers solutions for gaming, public transport and live sporting events. This is due to its versatility in offering an alternative payment method, simplifying subscription processes and facilitating access for users without access to traditional payment methods. Do you want to know more about its advantages? Find out more in the Carrier Billing API Whitepaper where you can also explore its nature, composition, functioning and other topics of interest such as technical requirements and transparency issues.

And if you are interested in payment methods and the cybersecurity of fintech services, we offer you the Device Location API: a tool that allows you to take full advantage of the capabilities of the network to shield banking operations against possible fraud, in a simple and fast way. Explore the possibilities of our APIs on the initiative website and sign up to our Developer Hub to start testing them!

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