Direct carrier billing has typically offered a certain appeal to brands like Facebook and Zynga that sell high-margin virtual currency. More recently, however, firms with tighter-margin but high-value products — think streaming media — are also feeling the need to adopt that payment method.

A case in point would be Rhapsody, the streaming music provider that claims millions of monthly subscribers. With younger users largely eschewing the PC in favor of mobile, the Seattle-based company realized it had to make it easier for mobile users to subscribe to its service. It has enlisted BilltoMobile, a prominent worldwide provider of direct carrier billing. The news was announced today.

Requiring a user to enter personal information such as name, address and credit card number on a mobile device is known to create high purchase friction; a widely cited industry statistic holds that only a tiny number of consumers who initiate a digital purchase on a mobile device — in the low single digits — actually complete the transaction.

Rhapsody's new arrangement with BilltoMobile is "less about the payment side and more about giving the consumer a great experience regardless of which channel they're using to interact with the brand," Paris Leung, vice president of sales at BilltoMobile, told Mobile Payments Today.

The BilltoMobile smart payment platform interface lets merchants offer varied purchase options such as one-time, initial trial and paid subscription. Rhapsody charges $9.99 for a monthly subscription.

Leung explained how the flow works. Instead of forcing a potential Rhapsody subscriber to enter his or her street address, phone number and credit card information, the person's cellphone carrier can detect that the transaction has been initiated on a smartphone. Because the payment will be charged to the user's monthly phone bill, no information must be added on the handset. The consumer clicks once to accept terms and conditions, and once more to OK the payment.

BilltoMobile said it's the only direct carrier biller with connectivity to all five major U.S. operators: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular. The company's mobile payments platform has been in use for a couple years — Rhapsody went live with it about two weeks ago — and while Leung could not disclose how many users who browse Rhapsody on their mobile device end up subscribing, he said clients who have optimized for mobile with the company's solution typically see conversion rates topping 85 percent.

Leung said Rhapsody concluded that while its credit-card-based subscription process may work well on a PC, "to make it great on mobile they needed to change their payment mechanism to maintain that great customer experience."

In a news release, Scott Engel, Rhapsody's director of global payments and risk, agreed. "Consumer experience is paramount at Rhapsody, and we want consumers to have the best possible music experience regardless of how they choose to stream our music service or pay for it. BilltoMobile's solution makes the purchase experience easier and intuitive across a wide variety of devices, countries and carriers. (Its) platform fits nicely with Rhapsody's need to support subscriptions for a global consumer base."

The service is live only in the U.S. so far, but BilltoMobile, which services more than 80 countries and more than 200 mobile operators, is "ready to expand wherever (Rhapsody) would like to go," Leung said.

BilltoMobile's platform is distinguished from competitors, Leung said, because it can process free trials and full monthly subscriptions. "That's common in credit card billing but not in carrier billing," he said. "It's becoming more mainstream."

The company also offers a wider reach worldwide, he said, processing three to four times more accounts than other carrier billers. San Jose, Calif.-based BilltoMobile is the U.S. subsidiary of Danal Co. Ltd., a global provider of e-commerce mobile payments with offices around the world.

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