New service enables news and magazine content to be monetised on mobile without costly apps

London, June 9th, 2011: ImpulsePay (www.impulsepay.com), the UK’s leading Payforit provider, is to unveil PublishPay, a new solution created specifically for the publishing sector, which has been designed to help publishers monetise their mobile content. 

Available now, PublishPay is a new service that has been developed to cater directly to the needs of the whole publishing sector. As many publishers struggle to come to terms with how to make money online – and even how to get their news mobile at all – PublishPay enables them to quickly and easily create a mobile news site that can be generating revenue in a matter of a few minutes.

PublishPay has an in-built payment structure which uses Payforit, the mobile payments service backed by all the UK’s mobile operators, to add the cost of the content to the reader’s mobile phone bill, or remove it from their available credit.

The FT has recently launched its own mobile web app, yet not every publisher has the resources to develop their own solution in-house. PublishPay can create an instant mobile ‘app’ with an in-built payment mechanism, allowing publishers to make money from mobile immediately.

“The conversation around mobile publishing seems to be dominated by apps, yet that is not the right approach for everyone,” said Chris Newell, CEO of ImpulsePay. “As the FT has shown this week, for many publishers it is the wrong approach as it is expensive, time-consuming and limits their audience.”

App development can be a costly and drawn-out process and by their very nature apps only target a niche segment of the population that have the right mobile phone or operating system. There are reportedly only around seven million UK iPhone users, while it is believed that only 3% of mobile users use an iPad to access the mobile internet, so creating a single app limits a publisher’s audience. PublishPay enables publishers to target all handsets, dramatically increasing a publisher’s mobile audience.

With daily content charges of up to £10 for each reader available to be levied, publishers can use PublishPay to create substantial revenue streams. There are no set up or monthly fees and publishers keep 75% of the transaction fee, better than the 70:30 split currently offered to them by Apple.

It is very simple for publishers to set up and create a mobile web version of their news feed using PublishPay. ImpulsePay’s one-click mobile payment service immediately creates a payment gateway and publishers can set the pricing for their content using the simple configuration tools. Content can be accessed for free, or per-article or per-day pricing can be set. The service also allows for subscription payments to be taken, so publishers can create a regular mobile audience and income stream.

PublishPay can even create niche sections of a publication if preferred, for example creating tailored ‘Sport’ or ‘Showbiz’ sites to help segment audiences and create more targeted mobile news sites.

Newell continued, “Many publishers are finding it difficult not only to make money from mobile, but to get that content mobile in the first place. With PublishPay, we’ve created a whole new revenue-generating model for publishers which instantly takes mobile news to anyone with a mobile phone. Everyone in the value chain receives payment: the publishers for their content, the operators receive a share of the transaction fee, and customers can read the news they choose on their handset for the cost of a daily print newspaper.”

ImpulsePay will be unveiling PublishPay on 14th June at Mobile Media Strategies 2011, a full-day summit on mobile platforms for newspapers, consumer, professional and digital media businesses, which will see many leading publishers in attendance. However, the solution is available immediately.

ImpulsePay is the fastest-growing Payforit provider, providing an easy way for businesses to generate revenue using mobile payments. Payforit is supported by all licensed UK network operators and is extremely simple for websites and blogs, content owners and publishers to implement. Unlike previous forms of online payment, such as using credit cards, SMS billing or PayPal, ImpulsePay’s Payforit service setup is straightforward and easy to use with instructions available online.