LUUP on Mobile Phone Development blog

http://mobilephonedevelopment.com/page/2/

Selling Your Software

January 25th, 2006

If you sell your mobile software direct to consumers, check out Sharewire who offer payment by premium SMS, interactive telephone voice response, credit card, Paypal and now, LUUP.

Sharewire describe LUUP as follows…

"We are please to announce the launch of an exciting new payment method for your customers which offers the same payouts as Credit cards or Paypal. LUUP is an e-wallet, a bit like PayPal, but with some important differences;

- Customers can pay by SMS as well as online. To pay by SMS, they send the same codes as before to the same number but instead of billing their phone bill, we bill their LUUP account. Online, customers simply enter their mobile number and PIN code. Sharewire will only support the pay by SMS method.

- LUUP is open to anyone over 14, unlike Paypal and credit cards.

- LUUP is more secure. Like Paypal, customers don’t need to give their card details, but because LUUP uses the mobile phone it is less open to fraud

However, customers must register for a LUUP account before they can use it. Therefore, for products up to EUR 5, we will offer the first product a customer purchases for EUR 1 to encourage registration. This enormous discount is paid for by LUUP and will not affect your payout. In other words: you can sell your products for 1 Euro and still get paid the normal 60% of the regular price! You do not have to do anything to apply; at the end of next week, our payment screens will include LUUP as a payment method. However, you can decide you do not want to offer your products for 1 Euro (and get paid the normal rate).

We encourage you to take full advantage of this opportunity and let your customers know they can get your content for 1 Euro.

LUUP is available for customers from the UK, Germany and Norway only."

At the same time, Sharewire have introduced a ‘free’ pricing model where people can download your application for the normal cost of an SMS. You, as a developer, just pay for an SMS bundle to deliver the application. This is great for trial versions or free applications that provide a service that’s paid for another way.

As always, this isn’t an advert and I get nothing from this. Sharewire is just a service I have used in the past and recommend. In fact, I was one of their first customers.