Vodafone India opens its billing and messaging APIs to third-party developers

Vodafone India has launched the Vodafone Developer Platform that will allow third-party developers to tap its billing and message APIs, amongst other resources. Opening up of the billing API means that developers will be able to offer in-app purchases that can be billed to a Vodafone India customer's monthly bill or account balance for postpaid and prepaid customers respectively.

Speaking about the initiative, Vivek Mathur, Chief Operating Officer, Vodafone India said, "With the growth of smartphones and mobile internet, people are increasingly showing more interest in mobile apps and content services. To strengthen the ecosystem for app developers & content service providers and partner with them, we have launched the Vodafone Developer Platform. We expect the developer community to leverage this initiative of Vodafone to create locally relevant applications / content services and to monetise their ideas across Vodafone's customer base. The Developer Platform will help in streamlining the partner on-boarding and transparent commercial settlements. This will also enable our customers use their Vodafone accounts to purchase any app or content offered by local as well international developers & content providers.""

Apart from opening up Vodafone network resources such as subscriber profile, billing, location, messaging etc., the mobile operator will also provide developers a facility to test their apps and services in a simulated environment. According to Vodafone, a "minimal, standard set of terms and conditions govern the commercial and others aspects of the developers relationship with Vodafone India, while providing them potential access and exposure to millions of quality customers."

NDTV Gadgets wrote to Vodafone to get more details about the developer terms, and questions that customers might have, like unauthorised use of the billing API and what information is exposed via the subscriber profile API, but we did not receive any response until the time of filing this report.