In recent years, mobile payments have become commonplace. We quickly became accustomed to paying friends and for online goods with a mobile app like PayPal or directly through our banking apps. Then, it became possible to use apps to pay at card terminals in stores and at venues, removing the need to carry around debit cards.
Still, there’s a far more seasoned and often overlooked form of paying with your smartphone that offers a great many perks – particularly when it comes to paying for entertainment products. Enjoying a bit of a resurgence of late, here’s what you need to know about the original and still widely accessible way to pay with your phone.
How do you pay with your mobile bill?
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When you have a mobile phone contract or even a pay-as-you-go sim card, it is possible to just charge payments to that bill. This way, the payment just gets added to the bill that you need to cover at the end of the month rather than your bank, mobile payment app, or eWallet being charged there and then.
When going to make a payment, where you can use this method, you’ll be able to select Mobile Phone from the dropdown of payment options – just as you would PayPal or debit card. Next, you’ll just need to enter your contract provider, and your phone number, and then input the code messaged to you to confirm the purchase.
This payment method has been around for decades. In the early days of smartphones, you could purchase pre-iPhone games and songs from operator stores, charging the payments to your contract or sim balance. In 2009, Pizza Hut UK’s app lets you pay for pizza deliveries with your monthly phone bill.
Where can you use your mobile bill to pay now?
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Mobile bill payments are at their most prevalent with digital entertainment platforms. Chief among these is the vast collection of online casinos that let you pay by phone bill. As BonusFinder UK’s website details, you can make deposits of up to £30 per day at these casinos and get the playing funds instantly.
Then, you just pay the phone as normal to cover the cost of the deposit. The low deposit limits of this particular method are cited as a strong choice for those looking to keep their spending in check. All the major contract suppliers in the UK allow for the payment method, particularly on gaming platforms.
Microsoft, the PlayStation Store, Google Play, and Epic Games are all viable for mobile bill payments made by Three’s UK customers. The same goes for customers on O2 and EE, but with those two, the Apple App Store is also listed as a place for this payment, as is Netflix specifically for EE.
With so much of our entertainment hours taking place on smartphone screens, it makes sense to many for those subscription fees or purchases to all come out at once to one company. For account management, it means that you don’t need to wonder when all the little payments will be coming out and can just budget for it all to go on one day.
Paying via your mobile bill isn’t anything new, but it’s certainly proving to be an increasingly convenient option in our smartphone-centric world.