India's new carrier billing policy, which enables prepaid users to pay for digital apps services using their mobile balance, but also imposes additional taxes (WPC charges), won't impact pricing of digital apps and services but it will hit the content providers, Uday Sodhi, EVP and Head (Digital Business) at Sony Pictures Networks India said, responding to MediaNama's queries on the impact of the new policy. "Basically, 15-18% (of the revenue) has gotten shaved off, and I would prefer a means which don't have so much of a shave-off in it. Services like ours prefer credit cards, debit cards, wallet payments, compared to telecom payment options, because what finally comes to us is significantly more. If the services are non-telco, we get between 95-98%, because most of it is credit card or wallet, and there are only payment gateway charges. This is how it should be for payment collection services." "Our preference," he added, "is obviously towards the 95% range, even though fundamentally it is natural for us to prefer carrier billing because the carrier ecosystem is far larger than any other payment collection ecosystem, whether debit card, credit card or digital wallets. The people who have balances on their mobile accounts is a billion people. It becomes a great way for transacting for digital goods. Carrier billing is used by many key content providers, including music streaming services like Times Internet's Gaana, Sony's SonyLIV, ALTBalaji, among other services. Key players offering carrier billing include Fortumo, Boku and Dailyhunt's ipayy. However, the big deals last…
