recurring charging for mobile app

Inevitability

Inevitability

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greetings!
Let's say I wanted to write a weather app (just as an example) for Android / iOS / BlackBerry, but I want to charge users for access to the service (say R5 a month)
What are the best options for a charging mechanism, bearing in mind that ALOT of people don't have a bank account or a credit card?
I want to maximise the accessibility of the app so it's crucial that I can charge anyone and everyone who has R5 and is willing to part with it.

I've been thinking about it and the best idea I can come up with is to deduct money from a user's airtime... But how??? I'd have to have some way to get the money from Vodacom/MTN/CellC/8ta.
How do those pay-R5-a-week-for-the-latest-incredible-farting-ringtone guys do it?

And what are my other options?

EDIT...
Some background: I'm a complete novice... never wrote a mobile app in my life (yet). But I want to start doing my own thing. I'm trying to understand the effort and mechanics of how this whole thing will work so I'll know how deep the pool is before jumping in! :)
 
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How are you gonna make this app available to the users? I'm assuming you want to avoid the stores which have the charging mechanism built in. Most people with an Android or Apple will have a credit card or something to use on there.


As far as I am aware those R5 subscription things are organised by the SP so you can talk to them maybe. You could offer the app for free but ask users to sms a number to get a code (for which you charge them), but now you are limiting yourself to RSA users really.
 
Hamster said:
How are you gonna make this app available to the users? I'm assuming you want to avoid the stores which have the charging mechanism built in. Most people with an Android or Apple will have a credit card or something to use on there.
As far as I am aware those R5 subscription things are organised by the SP so you can talk to them maybe. You could offer the app for free but ask users to sms a number to get a code (for which you charge them), but now you are limiting yourself to RSA users really.
Click to expand...
Fast response! Thanks!
The app will only target RSA users. I'd like to make the app free to download and then charge users for accessing the service (maybe after a free trial period). So my intention is to put it up on the Play Store / iTunes / BB app store. This, I think, will maximise the accessibility.
By the way... see the "EDIT" to my post above with some background on me.
The idea is very new to me... just been thinking about it for the last 2 days.
 
I'd use the tools given to you by iOS/Android/BB

I'm not clued up on Android or BB, but I know that iOS allows for "in-app purchases" and it goes through their own system, so the user would most likely already have their details with itunes so you won't have to worry about that at all. They do take a bit of commission though.

To be honest, a monthly charge on it won't really be the best approach to make some money off of it. You could have a basic service which is free and then people pay a once-off fee to get the premium service with extra features and what not.

Then maybe have in-app purchases enabled.

For Example, Tapped Out (The Simpsons game) is a free download and you can play free, but they make limited time items available which you pay with Donuts (that can be earned over time, but not much). You can then buy donuts via the store to buy these items if you'd like or continue playing with the free stuff. The other day they mentioned they sold over 1 billion donuts (which is a ****ing huge amount considering you pay almost 70 GBP for 3000 donuts)

So think outside the box. Not knowing what your app will do or what service you will provide is a bit difficult to suggest anything, but my suggestion is to stick with what these stores provide you with, which is a platform of users who already has their CC details with the respective stores and would want to buy the app.
 
Thanks for the advice.
The service I envision is meant to targeted low-income individuals. Herein lies the complexity of the charging mechanism.
The idea is to charge a very small fee weekly/monthly and give the user super value for their money. An example would be to charge a user R1/week and provide coupons worth R50 a month.
The thing is, someone with an iPhone5 or GalaxyS3 might not be too interested in saving R50 a month, while a low end user on a BlackBerry PayAsYouGo, with no bank account or credit card will be alot more interested in this. But these are the ones that I can't figure out how to bill with a low overhead cost.
But again, thanks for the response.
 
FYI, people with smartphones aren't normally classified as low-income. You need to do a bit more market research before you go ahead with this.
 
Regarding IOS, the App Store is filled with weather apps. Free and once off payment. Why would anyone use an app that you have to pay to use on a regular basis ?

Not sure about Android though.
 
you could consider doing an html5 website thats optomized for mobile. then you dont have to worry about which platform its on and can implement your own payment scheme if you want
 
AcidRaZor said:
you could consider doing an html5 website thats optomized for mobile. then you dont have to worry about which platform its on and can implement your own payment scheme if you want
Click to expand...
Very interesting idea. Never even occurred to me. I'll add it to my notes... Thanks!
 
Google "html5 v native apps"

Html5 is limited in many respects, but is more appropriate for some projects.

If you are going to be serious about development for mobile platform, you should be prepared to consider both. Possibly even be able to support IOS and Andriod native platforms. Unfortunately, porting apps from one to another isn't simple. Both are essentially C, but the API's they use are very different.

Ofc, if you built your app as an html5 app, then the device doesn't matter. :)
But then if you app can work better as an iOS or Andriod app, someone will build one.

Choose the platform which is appropriate to the app, is the best strategy.

Btw, Facebook moved away from html5.

http://www.businessinsider.com/bii-interview-html5-is-not-all-or-nothing-2012-11
 
I think the reasoning behind Facebook's move might have had to do with when they bought Instragram
 
Instead of coding for multiple platforms, you could also use something like Adobe Flex, code once and deploy to multiple platforms.
 
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