New kind of payment method - works for Finnish, does it work for others as well?

[Morphecy]

I recently found a mobile phone logo / ring tone seller service called Mobile G Host ( http://www.mobileghost.fi ). Their service is located in Finland and they let you sell their & your logos on your site. They take some base price and you get the rest. I thought that this could be excellent service for Finnish people. I mean - Finnish people don't have credit cards and we are afraid of paying over Internet (one of our biggest banks even says with capital letters: "YOU CAN'T USE THIS CREDIT CARD IN INTERNET UNLESS THE SITE HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE BANK"... so that leads to lack of credit card use ;))

Anyway - this ring tone payment service is used by cell phones and it's real easy. You just send SSM "SERVICE RINGTONE" to number "12345" (or something like that) and you get your tone and your phone bill will be charged for 1.20€ or whatever it costs. Now, why couldn't we use this to buy games as well? You could use your Nokia to send $19.99 message (Mobile G Host, the service provider, would take 50 cents and you would take the rest) and get SSM message with download link.

This could work for Finnish customers, I wonder if there are similar services for other countries as well?

[Chris00]

I recently found a mobile phone logo / ring tone seller service called Mobile G Host ( http://www.mobileghost.fi ). Their service is located in Finland and they let you sell their & your logos on your site. They take some base price and you get the rest. I thought that this could be excellent service for Finnish people. I mean - Finnish people don't have credit cards and we are afraid of paying over Internet (one of our biggest banks even says with capital letters: "YOU CAN'T USE THIS CREDIT CARD IN INTERNET UNLESS THE SITE HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE BANK"... so that leads to lack of credit card use ;))

Anyway - this ring tone payment service is used by cell phones and it's real easy. You just send SSM "SERVICE RINGTONE" to number "12345" (or something like that) and you get your tone and your phone bill will be charged for 1.20€ or whatever it costs. Now, why couldn't we use this to buy games as well? You could use your Nokia to send $19.99 message (Mobile G Host, the service provider, would take 50 cents and you would take the rest) and get SSM message with download link.

This could work for Finnish customers, I wonder if there are similar services for other countries as well?

I can tell you that people in the United States would rather use a credit card then pay through the cell phone. SSM is not anywhere as near as popular as it is in Europe and the rest of the world (I don't know why).

[Lerc]

You just send SSM "SERVICE RINGTONE" to number "12345" (or something like that) and you get your tone and your phone bill will be charged for 1.20€ or whatever it costs. Now, why couldn't we use this to buy games as well?

Depending on the area it could be worth it. Here in NZ you can buy tickets to sports events this way. You order your ticket with the phone it sends you a code, you show your phone with that code on it at the gate to get in.

There are coke machines like this too. there's a number on the front of the machine, you dial it and a drink pops out and you get billed.

It's going to take a while to be commonly accepted but it beats carrying money around.