Fortumo’s platform is free to use. First, you need to create an account, configure your payment services and integrate our payment product. After that, you can test your service and we will review it. Make sure your service follows compliance requirements.
Nothing – there is no setup or monthly fee.
Recurring payments are available through Fortumo upon request. To activate recurring payment functionality for your account, get in touch with us at bd@fortumo.com.
No, both individuals and companies can use Fortumo’s platform. Please consult your local tax authorities regarding revenue declarations resulting from income earned through carrier billing.
We are constantly working on expanding our coverage and probably that particular country will be connected in the future. You can also drop us a note at support@fortumo.com so we could prioritize certain countries.
We will send you information regarding your approval within 2 business days after you have submitted your service for review. To speed up the process, please be as detailed as possible about your service information when submitting your service for review.
All inactive accounts without any active payment services are deleted automatically after a certain period of time.
Your payout will be made by the 15th day of the month if the following conditions are met:
You can see the length of the payout cycle for each country from Revenue shares view on your dashboard. For example if the payout cycle is 2 months, the revenue earned in January will be paid out in April (it takes two months to collect the revenue and will be paid out in third month).
You will find that information from your dashboard. You can view your overall performance from your dashboard, under Revenue tab. In addition, “Estimated Next Payouts” shows predicted future payouts according to the payout cycle.
To transfer money to your bank account, we need to know your IBAN (International Bank Account Number) and BIC (Bank Identification Code), also known as the SWIFT address of the bank, for example DABADKKK or HABALV22. Usually it can be found on the website of your bank.
End-users are always billed together with the local tax (VAT, sales-tax, etc.), but such taxes are typically handled by mobile operators. Therefore Fortumo is sharing revenue from the end-user price exclusive from taxes. I.e. the user is billed €10, VAT is €2 and payout percentage is 85%, you as a developer will get [(€10-€2)*0.85] €6.8 to your bank account. All information about revenue shares can be found in your dashboard from Revenue shares view.
Some mobile operators do not have an infrastructure to connect past transactions with refunds and unpaid phone bills. In such cases operators treat uncollected sum as bad debt which is withheld from the payout.
The money may decrease when some messages with status “pending” change to “failed”. It may happen if the operator fails to deliver the billing report or the end-user refuses to pay the bill.
This can be because of mobile operators have either refunded some of your end-users or collected a bad debt (people did not pay their phone bill) or you have calculated the revenue sharing from the end-user price with VAT.
Yes, sometimes end-users ask Fortumo for a refund, for example if the service they tried to purchase did not work correctly or a minor has made the purchase without parent’s consent. In such case we may need to refund the user. The amount for refund will be deducted from your payout together with the refund handling fees.
We are converting the currencies with a commercial exchange rate once a month in correlation to the mobile operators’ settlement cycle. It is done on the first business day of the month of the particular payout.
Fortumo supports wire transfers to bank accounts and payouts through PayPal and Skrill. The following transactions costs apply to each payout:
Fortumo isn’t withholding any taxes from your revenue, but you might be required to pay income tax of your own country, if you are a private individual. VAT from the messages sent is declared by the mobile operators. All the revenue shares and the calculations are without VAT. Since Fortumo as a company registered in EU, 0% VAT is added to all the payments.
You can configure your payout details from the Payout Configuration page. If you need to make changes in your payout configuration, they need to be done before the end of the current month to be taken into account for next month’s payout.
##### Is it possible to use a higher end-user price? Typically yes, but it depends on a country and mobile operator regulations. Let us know what do you need and we’ll see how we can help you.
Adult, lotteries, gambling and donation related services are strictly forbidden. Please see the complete list of country specific content restrictions here and general compliance information here.
By default, the Latin alphabet is used. Non-Latin alphabets like Cyrillic or Greek can also be used in some countries, but only if supported by the local carriers. The regulations for reply messages can be found in the Country regulations document.
##### What’s the difference between MO and MT billing? MO and MT billing are the two methods how carriers charge users. With MO-billing (Mobile Originating Billing), the end-user is charged for sending a message, thus the billing status is checked before the request to service back end. With MT-billing (Mobile Terminating Billing) operators charge for the reply-message sent back to the user. In this case, users are billed only when they receive the reply-message. If there are not enough funds on the balance, the reply message is not delivered.
Please notice that “pending” status does not mean the billing is unsuccessful. It means the billing report has not been sent to us yet. Actually, in most cases “pending” status in MO-billing countries already means the “OK” status. Billing will turn failed only when users refuse to pay their mobile bill at the end of month, but this is very rare. So in MO-countries you should also provide service to users with pending billing. Although for MT countries the billing status is usually available instantly, in some cases it can take some time before it changes to either “ok” or “failed”. In some countries delayed billing reports might happen from time to time.
To protect the end-users and avoid service abuse there are set of limits applied. The overview can be found here.
Sometimes operators fail to bill the customer. This may happen for example when the end-user does not have enough balance on the pre-paid card or there was a technical error.
##### What type of messages does Fortumo’s Messaging Platform support? Fortumo’s Messaging Platform supports sending any type of SMS for communication with your customers: 2-factor user authentication, payment confirmation and reminder notifications, error messages, marketing and upselling notifications as well as informational messages that comply with local regulations.
Access to Fortumo’s Messaging Platform currently works on an opt-in basis. To enable the functionality for your Fortumo account, please get in touch with our Customer Support or with your Account Manager.
Currently there is no sandbox environment for our Messaging service, but you can test the integration by sending a live message. Should you need additional help on testing, Fortumo’s team is happy to help you out with our library of international SIM cards.
Yes, in case we are unable to deliver the SMS we notify your back-end with failed delivery error code. For additional information, please refer to the integration documents.
There are no fixed or recurring fees for setting up messaging services on Fortumo’s Messaging Platform. Fees for each market are dependent on message types that you wish to send, as well as the messaging volume. For a rate card, please get in touch with our Customer Support or with your Account Manager.
You do not need to pay any upfront fees for using our Messaging Platform nor do you need to have a deposit with Fortumo to send messages. We invoice you for sent messages on a monthly basis, which also means you are never in danger of your balance running out and messages not being delivered.
Fortumo works with more than 350 mobile operators in 100 countries.
Any messages sent should comply with local regulations and marketing requirements. The length of the SMS is limited depending on the charset you use and may vary from 70 to 180 symbols.
By using Unicode, it’s possible to include emoticons in your SMS messages. To do this, find your desired emoji/character from the Unicode Emoji list, then add the code to your message content.
Country-specific regulations and content limitations may be applied. Please make sure your message content complies by checking with our Customer Support team or your Account Manager to them before sending.
Fortumo Messaging Platform supports dynamic alphanumeric sender ID’s with up to 11 symbols in length. Please note that certain mobile operators require pre-registration for new sender IDs before they can be used. A default sender ID will be applied if a non-whitelisted sender ID is used. For a small number of mobile operators the Sender ID is always fixed. Please get in touch with our Customer Support team or with your Account Manager for additional information.
In case you did not find an answer here, please also make sure to check out Frequently Asked Questions for Web SDK and Android SDK products