BSNL subscribers can now pay for Amazon Prime memberships with their mobile bill or pre-paid balance as part of a carrier billing deal between the two companies, reports TelecomAsia. BSNL's carrier billing deal is backed by mobile technology company Trident's Bundling Platform. Carrier billing is a payment mechanism in which users can pay for goods and services through their prepaid phone balance or their monthly phone bill. This is important in India, where most mobile users don’t have credit cards and debit card use is low. Fortumo's VP for global business development Andrea Boetti said Fortumo's technology would enable onboarding users without the need to enter a credit card number for payment. In October 2018, Amazon tied up with Airtel, which gave a one-year Amazon Prime subscription free with many of its postpaid plans - Rs 649, Rs 799, and Rs 1199. Earlier that year, Airtel started offering the Prime with it Rs 499 postpaid plan and to V-Fiber broadband customers. Amazon's first tie up with a telecom company in India was with Vodafone in March 2017, when it offered Prime Video to Vodafone customers using Android for Rs 249. Netflix has, meanwhile, adopted a similar strategy and signed its third carrier billing deal in India with Hathway last year. It had existing billing deals with telecom service providers Vodafone and Airtel. Carrier billing in India On April 18, 2017, India’s Department of Telecommunications allowed pre-paid and post-paid mobile users to buy digital content such as apps and e-books up to a value of Rs…
