Carrier Features

Overview

The Charge To Account Gateway provides a single, carrier-independent API for charges and subscriptions. However, there are minor variations between carriers in the exact CTA functionality available.

The following table summarizes the features available on different carriers.

Feature	AT&T	Virgin Mobile	T-Mobile
Supported subscription periods	1 month only	Any	Any
Initial free period	Not supported	Supported	Supported
Hosting of payment pages	Carrier payment system (DirectBill)¹	MX Telecom	MX Telecom
Charge failure reason returned?	No	Yes	Yes
Notification which contains MSISDN/user ID	Post-confirmation (with marketing opt-in preference)	Charge confirmation	Charge confirmation
Refund of final timed subscription charge	Yes²	No	No
Can skip post-confirmation page (postConfirmation=none)	No	Yes	Yes
Anonymous User ID info	network billing mechanisms	network billing mechanisms user identifier subscription IDs	network billing mechanisms user identifier subscription IDs

Notes

For transactions made on AT&T, the user confirmation page is hosted by AT&T's DirectBill payment system. This page cannot be customised with your branding, but it will display the productName value passed in the original request. The process of directing the user from the CTA Gateway to the DirectBill system and back is handled automatically; your application does not have to behave any differently when charging an AT&T subscriber.
The final timed subscription charge will be refunded by AT&T following either an end user STOP request or an unsubscribe initiated by your application.