In April this year we have connected 70th country on the list. The summer has passed, and we proudly present an autumn gift for our partners – the connection of 9 additional countries: Italy, Vietnam, Guatemala, Honduras, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay. Thus, SmsCoin project has expanded its services coverage up to 81 countries in total, and this step clearly positions SmsCoin as a leader on the mobile payments market across Russian Federation as well as abroad.

Moreover, at the beginning of 2010 our project had an important goal set ahead – to connect 100 countries, and currently, we are getting closer to achieving this goal – in the nearest future additional countries will be added to the ever growing list. Get ready for the hottest autumn ever!

Due to the above-mentioned changes please make sure to update rates scale in addition to changing instructions for sending SMS on your website accordingly.

We are glad to inform you about a number of changes that took place lately.

In Argentina the shortcodes for the subscribers of Claro mobile carrier a separate shortcode 27777 was assigned, with the same price of 4.84 ARS.

In Мexico the rates have changed: instead of 15 MXN rate two new rates which are comon for all mobile cariers were added with the cost of 15.13 MXN and 23.20 MXN.

In Azerbaijan two new shortcodes of low cost are added: 3301 with rates 0.90 AZN and 0.75 AZN for the subscribers of Azerphone and Bakcell mobile carriers correspondingly, and 3302 with 2 AZN rate for the subscribers of both mobile carriers.

The data on Russian mobile carriers is updated and organized: Tambov GSM and Kodotel mobile carriers were added, information on SMARTS and NSS carriers was updated.

Please make sure to update rate scales and update instructions for sending SMS messages accordingly for the convenience of your website users.

We are pleased to inform you about SmsCoin coverage area expansion: the list of the countries connected to our project has enlarged. We connected the country of Kiwi and Maori - New Zealand! Currently 1 rate on the most popular mobile carriers is available.

On August 18-22 in Cologne (Germany) there was held an international game exhibition Gamescom 2010 and, as was promised earlier, we will tell you of what was going on there.

Noone felt bored and was not supposed to, as soon as organizers of the exhibition did their best, so besides 200 premiers that could be tested and played, there were numerous gorgeous shows, perfomances and contests. Gamers got the opportunity to try their hand at new games produced by such developers as Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Microsoft, Sony, Take-Two Interactive, etc. Queues to the pavillions lined up from morning till night. No wonder — the most part of the games presented at Gamescom will be released in the end of 2010 or even in the next year! Those who were not ready to repine in queues, could enjoy open presentations of games process — and they were really worth looking at. Certainly, pavillions with videogames by Blizzard Entertainment company were most popular. The representatives of the company held daily contests and performances for the visitors of Gamescom, and on Saturday, August 21, organized World of Warcraft fight, where the best German gamers took part in.

Considering perfectly equipped pavilions of Koelnmesse exhibition center, where one can find several food courts, cafes, lounge and recreation areas, and even get a massage session, you could spend your whole day at the exhibition. That was what most visitors did.

According to Gamescom 2010 organizers the exhibition had 254 thousand visitors, 18900 trade visitors and 505 exhibitors from 33 countries. SmsCoin representatives as well visited Gamescom. Of course we were mostly interested in business program of the event. And for good reason — the business part of the exhibition, which started a day earlier, gathered basic participants of interactive games industry, as well as service providers in this field. Among them were noticed the representatives of such companies as: Boku, Zong, Fortumo, Daopay, Paybyme and others, which is not surprisingly at all — on-line games compound significant share at sms-payments market, which in their turn at times just about to be the only way of monetization for developers. During our meetings with colleagues held within the framework of 'Synergy' partnership project, announced by SmsCoin, new agreements were reached. As a result, in the nearest future our partners can count on connection of new countries and rates in those countries which are already connected to SmsCoin.

Stay tuned for more updates on our site as well as on Twitter and Facebook!

During the last three years, SmsCoin project provides MT-subscriptions in countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and Israel. This year Russian Federation joined the above-mentioned list.

The amount of complaints from Russian subscribers who use MT-subscriptions offered by a certain contet-providers increased significantly in the first half of 2010. The service works as follows: user purchases a subscription for receiving messages from various services by sending an SMS message to a short code specified on the website. As a result, user pays for each and every message sent to his/her phone number from a certain website for a period of time set by the source owners. The reason for users' numerous complaints was in fact incorrect text for terms of services, which caused confusion amongst subscribers that could not understand why their phones were billed repeatedly. Moreover, this situation gave a free hand for many fraudsters who took advantage of this confusion, and numerous subscribers, misled by unclear text, eventually found out that they have been subscribed long after the funds disappeared from their mobile phones.

Due to frequent fraud incidents in MT-subscription sector, mobile carriers introduced a series of severe measures such as major fines imposed on content-providers in addition to increased service monitoring and its terms of use. To be more specific, starting August 2010 MTS mobile carrier established new rules as follows: those partners who provide service based on "Subscription" model according to regulations for advertising and communication, must present the subscriber with necessary information prior to service delivery where it is clearly specified that he/she purchased a subscription, and to obtain subscriber's consent to receive this information. Namely, to enable the subscriber to confirm his/her readiness to receive subscription services (by sending a message or confirming it on your website).

The above-mentioned requirements are identical for companies without any exceptions.

Fortunately, these rules are slightly different from the rules introduced by SmsCoin project. Thus, our partners do not have to radically change their approach to delivering services to their subscribers.

All the above-mentioned requirements will be valid starting 27th of August this year.

Please make sure that your services are in accordance with new requirements – simply contact your personal manager for further details.

On August 18-22 in the famous city of Cologne the largest trade fair and event highlight for interactive games and entertainment Gamescom 2010 will take place. Game industry specialists, active fans of computer games and surely lots of mass media representatives will gather in Koelnmesse trade fair center.
During the trade fair new products of computer games will be demonstrated, different conferences and entertainment shows will be held in the compound. Interesting business programm will enable its' participants to meet and obtain new business contacts with their colleagues from all over the world.
SmsCoin representatives will be a part of Gamescom 2010 and will keep you updated regarding this event. We would be more than happy to meet you in person in case you decide to visit this fair. We hope, that following Gamescom 2010 we will present our partners with some pleasant news. Stay tuned for more updates on our site as well as on Twitter and Facebook!

We are happy to inform you regarding the changes in short codes across Kazakhstan. The work of the short codes 4446 and 4449 was suspended. At the same time three brand new short codes were connected as follows:
— 3350 with price point of 170 tenge
— 3352 with price point of 500 tenge
— 3353 with price point of 600 tenge
The above-mentioned prices include VAT.

A number of worthwhile changes took place, such as:
∗ brand new rate was added
∗ partners' revenue share percentage based on certain short codes has been increased
∗ the rates based on newly added short codes are the same for all mobile carriers

Please make sure to update rate scales and update instructions for sending SMS messages accordingly for the convenience of your website users.

On June 11 SmsCoin project celebrated its' 4th anniversary.  Last year was marked for us with a number of pleasant news, and we are pleased to tell you about them.

We added a new service sms:donate to the list of existing services. You can add this service to your pages to collect donations using SMS-payments in order to develop your sites. According to our statistics, more than 3000 partners used this service, which is an undoubted index of the service being in demand.

Since July 2009 we have established connections with 10 new countries including: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Montenegro, Turkey, India, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus and Slovenia. Currently we have connections across 70 countries and we are not about to stop there — by the end of the year we intend to make it 100.

For the convenience of work with quite a quantity of countries and mobile operators we enable our partners to receive automatic notification about all the changes in rates. Such services as adding MNC and MCC parameter rates to feeds, as well as linking these parameters to all mobile carriers code processed by handlers and new and updated formats and export feeds data will be implemented in the nearest future.

Besides, we connected new mobile operators in a number of countries, added new rates and continue working on the optimization of our services.

Can any of you imagine a birthday without presents? We made a small, but really pleasant present for us, as well as for our partners — a new logo. We will be happy to receive your congratulations together with your feedbacks about the logo on our Facebook page!

We thank our partners for productive cooperation and hope for further development of reliable partnership!

Thank you!

Happy birthday, SmsCoin!

Due to the fact that starting January 1st 2011, Estonia adopts European currency, and since July 1st this year all price points are listed both in kroons and euros — SmsCoin will be using the following format as well. Please make sure that instructions for sending SMS messages on your website are updated accordingly.

We are happy to announce that additional mobile carrier in Armenia, Armentel, is now operative («Beeline» brand). Short codes available in Armenia have been changed accordingly:

— 5124 replaced with 3024
— 5125 replaced with 5025
— 5126 replaced with 5026

Please make sure to update the following changes in instructions for sending SMS on your website.