Definition: direct carrier billing

Making purchases that are charged to the customer's phone account. Also called "direct operator billing" and "mobile content billing," for decades, this has been the telephone company's method for charging additional services, such as long distance and pay-per-minute 900 numbers. With the advent of smartphones, direct carrier billing lets users make a purchase via their phone from compliant merchants without entering credit card data. Such transactions are typically quick (the carrier has the user's data) and relatively simple compared to other methods.