Company Offers 'Single-Click' Mobile PurchasingCompany Offers 'Single-Click' Mobile Purchasing

Financial services startup Billing Revolution unveiled Friday a billing platform that's designed to make it easier for customers to use their cell phones to buy products.

Typically, purchases made from a phone involve digital content for less than $20, and they are billed through the wireless carriers' systems. This system also usually involves high fees for merchants, and limitations on what they can sell.

But as more and more consumers surf the Internet from their handsets, Billing Revolution sees consumers increasingly wanting to use handsets to buy physical good.

"Today's opportunity is all about creating access and making it easier for people to start using their cell phone as their wallet. With consumer adoption increasing rapidly and the proliferation of mobile phones that are able to navigate the Web, it's only a matter of time before services like ours really take off," said Andy Kleitsch, Billing Revolution's CEO, in a statement.

With this platform, a customer could enter their credit card information on the mobile Web when they're ready to make a purchase. Once they enter the information, an SMS receipt is sent to the phone with an authentication link. After an initial purchase is made, future transactions are enabled with a single click.

For merchants, the company said it offers them an opportunity to capitalize on mobile traffic without having to pay high carrier fees, and it saves them from having to develop a credit card checkout platform. To sell merchandise through Billing Revolution, a merchant enters the product they want to sell into the company's Web site, and Billing Revolution manages and hosts the purchase page.

Billing Revolution makes its money by charging a percentage of the transaction, and Kleitsch realizes that cutting the carriers out of the billing process may rub some in the industry the wrong way. But he said the mobile operators so far have ignored the physical goods market and focused on digital content and micro-transactions.

Juniper Research predicted the gross transaction value of mobile payments to exceed $300 billion by 2013 and Billing Revolution is just one company trying to get a slice of that pie. The company will see competition from the carriers themselves, Bango, Amazon, and more.