[ohazi]

In the US, it puts the charge on your phone bill and makes it near impossible to contest or get a refund when things go wrong, because dealing with phone companies is usually way more painful than dealing with a credit card company or even a bank.

In the US, you shouldn't ever use this - you should just use a credit card instead.

In the UK everyone uses debit cards, so I'm not sure if this recommendation is still valid. In the US, using a debit card is possibly the only thing you could do that's worse than "bill my mobile carrier."

[tannhaeuser]

Hm that's an interesting US perspective that was new to me. I still maintain that establishing a non-monopolistic payment system is vital (similar to having a currency in the first place) and that, for us in the EU at least, telcos are reasonably competitive and on the regulatory hook anyway and thus best equipped to become payment providers.