Cricket Communications, Inc, a leading U.S. based provider of unlimited wireless services, uses Aepona’s Operator Payments Service (OPS) to enable its off-deck premium content business. Through OPS, their customers have greater access to mobile content and are able to participate in many interactive activities such as text-in media voting for popular television shows.
Aepona’s Operator Payments Service acts as a bridge between external aggregators, content providers and Cricket’s internal infrastructure. It is offered as a managed service, allowing service providers to maintain core focus and improve the time to market of their off-deck premium content business.
OPS utilizes Aepona’s industry leading payments technology and its advanced revenue sharing and settlement solution (PSE).
Case Study: Cricket powers off-deck mobile content with Aepona’s Operator Payments Service
Cricket’s Challenge
Offer flexible, secure access to premium off-deck content and services with a scalable solution that fully supports the future evolution of these services in the competitive, fast moving US mobile market.
Business Driver
Quickly grow premium services revenue and market share while minimizing costs and administrative overheads.
Aepona Solution
Aepona’s Operator Payments Service, providing fully managed end-to-end payments, messaging and settlement services, integrated with Cricket’s existing billing and messaging infrastructure, hosted and supported by Aepona.
Tangible Results
Rapid ramp-up of transparent and secure premium services for Cricket’s users, offering a vast range of products and services from a constantly changing pool of content providers, cost-effectively and seamlessly integrated with Cricket’s existing business infrastructure.
Building an off-deck business quickly
Off-deck premium services involve intricate relationships among a range of participants such as content providers, aggregators, and mobile carriers. Operators need to quickly and efficiently on-board and manage a dynamic network of participants offering a constantly evolving range of goods and services.
A leading US mobile operator, Cricket Communications, uses Aepona’s Operator Payments Service to allow Cricket customers to participate in a wide choice of premium off-deck content. Cricket (www.mycricket.com) offers consumer and business customers a flat-rate, unlimited service over a high-quality, all-digital wireless network in over 50 markets serving more than 2 million users across the United States.
Cricket is the pioneer of unlimited minutes with no long-term commitments or credit checks. Cricket offers customers the latest handsets and feature-rich mobile applications such as unlimited text, instant and picture messaging, popular games, ringtones and wallpapers. Aepona’s service allows Cricket to focus on expanding its coverage and subscriber base while simultaneously enabling the rapid, effective, multi-dimensional scaling up of its off-deck premium service offerings.
Managed SMS commerce
Premium SMS transactions pose technological challenges for any operator. They must ensure correct, reliable billing for content and services, providing aggregator partners with the necessary facilities to perform billing accurately. In addition, they must provide customer support with the ability to quickly identify premium content and service charges and support appropriate resolution including refund management.
Cricket uses Aepona’s Operator Payments Service to on-board the premium service aggregators who manage and route cross-carrier premium content purchases/subscriptions, including interactive campaigns such as TV voting.
Aepona’s Managed Service automatically determines which aggregator is responsible for every Premium SMS message, relieving Cricket’s messaging infrastructure of a significant overhead and ongoing maintenance.
Aepona’s Operator Payments Service automatically and transparently manages Premium SMS billing and routing for Cricket. It enforces Cricket’s business rules such as spending limits as well as confirming that the customer has an available balance to pay for the transaction. If the transaction can proceed, Aepona debits funds from the subscriber’s account and notifies the aggregator, who notifies the content provider, who delivers the content. If the transaction cannot proceed for any reason, Aepona sends the appropriate notification to the aggregator.
An integrated payments and settlement solution
The service utilizes Aepona’s industry leading payments technology and its advanced revenue sharing and settlement solution (AeponaPlus™).
The Managed Service allows consumers to purchase goods and services using any access channel and any payment instrument.
Comprehensive, end-to-end micro and macro-payment functionalities span the entire payment lifecycle including transaction acquisition, real-time accounting, clearing and settlement and account administration.
All financially relevant details about every transaction are tracked and recorded. Revenue sharing is allocated according to the terms applicable to that transaction only after payment has been received and products/services delivered.
Using Aepona’s browser-based management interface, Cricket defines the terms that govern the settlement for every transaction to reflect its contractual arrangements with all relevant participants. These contracts may contain multiple terms such as price range, product ID, volume, bundling conditions and more.
Full end-to-end auditability and traceability for every transaction enables quick, verifiable dispute resolution among revenue sharing participants as well as between customers and third parties. Complete revenue assurance is guaranteed by capturing all financially relevant details about every transaction. Guaranteed transaction consistency means money is neither created nor lost during the transaction-settlement process.
Browser-based manageability
Aepona’s Operator Payments Service includes a full range of system management tools which allow Cricket’s billing, marketing, customer care and operations staff to easily manage and datamine their Aepona-hosted premium services solution. Browserbased management interfaces deliver streamlined, highly usable configurability with no software installation or support costs including partner self care facilities to streamline partner management and reduce support overhead.
Customer care and protection
Aepona’s customer care infrastructure enables Cricket’s customer care staff to support users in post billing care, providing complete transparency for all billing charges and the ability to efficiently manage refunds. Full transaction traceability means Cricket can investigate problems involving third party content providers and take appropriate action to prevent fraud and unsolicited charging. In this way they can protect their brand and increase customer loyalty.
Choosing Aepona
Cricket chose Aepona for its worldwide experience in providing payments and settlement solutions to every type of operator, from local to multi-national. As a growing carrier, Cricket benefits from Aepona’s in-depth market knowledge to develop the strategy and platform best suited to its current business needs, with the flexibility to support future market developments and technology evolution. Aepona’s secure, market proven, 24×7 supported hosting solution enables fast, cost-effective deployment.
About Aepona’s Operator Payments Service
Aepona’s Operator Payments Service delivers end-to-end premium content payments and settlement services for operators. It manages relationships between external aggregators, content providers and an operator’s internal billing infrastructure using Aepona’s industry leading payments and revenue sharing and settlement solutions. The service provides real-time authentication and authorization, refund management and integration with financial systems. It also provides protection to consumers from incorrect or unsolicited charging, through advanced features unique to the Aepona Payments Module. Its comprehensive settlement and reconciliation services enable automated, accurate settlement calculations with all partners. Refunds and reversals are automatically reflected in settlement statements. It is run as a hosted service, with US and European based secure data centers providing 24×7 support.
