While stories regarding near field communication (NFC) technologies are grabbing considerable attention this week, developments in other forms of mobile payments continue. Earlier this week two direct mobile billing (DMB) companies, BOKU and BilltoMobile, announced a cooperative agreement to provide payment services to Verizon Wireless customers. 

BilltoMobile and BOKU, both based in Northern California, provide an alternative to credit and debit cards by allowing cell phone users to charge online purchases to their monthly cell phone bills. DMB payments are particularly popular in online gaming, where purchase amounts are small and young game players may have access to cell phones but not credit cards. The merchant fees for DMB payments are also considerably smaller than those for credit cards. 

The agreement allows merchants offering the BOKU payment service to use BilltoMobile’s connection to the Verizon Wireless billing system. BOKU already has a billing connection to AT&T customers in the United States, as well as similar connections to carriers around the world, but this agreement gives them access to 94 million U.S. Verizon Wireless customers. Verizon is the second largest wireless carrier in the United States by number of subscribers but is the largest by revenue. 

In a joint statement, Jim Greenwell, BilltoMobile CEO, and Mark Britto, BOKU CEO, said, "BilltoMobile and BOKU's cooperative agreement is a landmark in U.S. mobile payments cooperation. The real winners today are the many wireless subscribers who are excited about access to convenient, secure online mobile payments and the merchants who provide these consumers with a wide array of digital goods, content and services."

DMB payments are expected to grow as mobile payment adoption increases. A recent report by Aite Group, a financial research company, forecasts DMB payments will be used to purchase more than $7.6 billion in online goods by 2015.