A Realtime Billing Engine and its Application

A system that collects usage events and processes them to calculate charges instantly is known as real-time billing. As designed, it also collects payment from customers in advance for prepaid mobile services before calculating charges for actual usage. The telecom sector uses a real time billing system where customers pay the amount before accessing services. The customers can review their account balances and usage in real time through the online portal. Further, it is not limited to only telecom; any business that depends on a prepaid model (such as online purchases) also uses a real time billing engine.

The EarnBill realtime billing system combines an OCS (online charging system) and a core Billing Engine to determine the charges of every transaction. Further, it keeps deducting the usage from the prepaid balance of the customer account till the balance is available. Everything happens in real-time – the moment a customer credits the balance, the service starts immediately and stops when the balance turns zero (in the case of prepaid mobile service). Long story short, real-time billing is associated with a prepaid approach in which consumers pay the service charges in advance; however, in the postpaid model, you pay the amount after utilizing the services.

Its primary use is in real time billing telecom mobile prepaid services, but currently being used in various other sectors. Let us dive deep into two business use cases below.

1) Online Shopping – One-time purchase (without recurring transactions).
2) Telecom Sector – Prepaid mobile service (with recurring usage).

As shown in the diagram, once a customer finalizes the product to buy, the review page (before proceeding to the payment) talks to the backend system for real time rating and real time charging with all applicable discounts and taxes to show it to the customer for confirmation. After confirmation, the customer proceeds with the payment, which interacts with the backend system to connect you to the payment gateway. Once payment is successful, the system sends you the order confirmation or an invoice (with payment, billing, and shipping/delivery details).

The EarnBill real-time billing system helps any size of business to set up and streamline your rating, charging, and billing workflow, integrate with the payment gateway, and manage revenue realization as per your requirements.

The telecom business requires real time billing for rating and charging prepaid mobile usage immediately. Therefore, the prepaid mobile service depends on an online charging system to keep track of usage and charge it (which could be voice calls or data usage), and accordingly, update the billing account and information.

EarnBill real-time billing offers the following complex features:

• Authenticate & authorize every call or data usage session & accounting.
• Provision of services like account activation and deactivation.
• Closed/private wallet for maintaining prepaid balance amount.
• Comprehensive product catalog and plans with bundled items.
• Various built-in pricing strategies and rating options for real time rating.
• Mediate usage events (billing mediation component) for real time charging.
• Deduct the allowed limit/quota (as per plan) or update the balance.
• Compose an invoice to reflect calculated charges and every other detail.
• Integration with a network server for account activation or deactivation.
• Various payment options to allow users to recharge the account.

The crucial thing is that all the above functions happen within a fraction of a second – real-time operations. Let’s understand it further with an example and diagram.