Too Many Billing Options - Good? Bad? Necessary?

[McVisa]

There are about a dozen different payment/billing methods for various countries that I can think of from the top of my head:

Credit Cards (Cascade Billing)
Online Checks
Money Orders
PayPal
Phone Billing
Pay by Minute (Dialers)
SMS Billing
Bank Debit
Broadband Billing Solutions
Pay by Mail Checks
Wire Transfers
AsiaPay for Hong Kong


Now after you've set up all these, you still can't reach 60% of the world's population that is still using good old cash and nothing else.

I mean the days of modems are gone (or going away) with the coming of broadband and with it is decreasing the possibility of dialer billing.

You probably see dozens of dialer companies claiming to be able to bill 230+ or 253 countries or whatever... well guess what... There are only 193 countries in the world! doh!

All those 3rd world countries are technically advancing, but the people are getting better connections not credit cards.

All those countries that don't have a high % of card users, which means more than 10% of the total population of that country - you won't be able to bill them any better by an alternative billing method than by credit card.

You've wasted a week setting up all these billing options just for 9 countries - and you could just as well have used credit cards and check billing.

So when you read a testimonial about how Blow Joe increased his amount of sales by 30% thanks to this or that service, it's nothing more than sales BS.

If someone wants to get access to your paysite and you don't offer alternative billing, no problem, they'll just pay by credit card.

Now what do You think the future of billing will be like? in 3 years? in 5 years?

- thanks for reading