Valista signs on AOL

Software vendor Valista, which has to date gained its most significant traction among European and wireless operators, announced that AOL has chosen its OffersPlus package to help support its premium services efforts.

OffersPlus will allow AOL to package premium content and services in targeted consumer offerings and bill them as a single package. For example, a user could purchase a package that includes audio downloads, coupons for a future CD by similar artists and a three-month trial of AOL for Broadband and AOL could bill the entire package as on unit, said John Hurley, vice president of marketing for Valista.

“They want to wrap [premium services] in themes that are attractive to customers,” he said. “Now not only has the average billing gone up per subscriber but the wrapper is more attractive.”

In many ways, it’s ike buying a value meal at a fast food restaurant, with OffersPlus bringing together disparate elements into a package and billing it at a single rate.

OffersPlus links the characteristics of a subscription,” Hurley said.

Valista can integrate its software into existing billing systems, and it has done that with 14 large vendors, but typically service providers will run the OffersPlus suite as a separate entity. The objective is to give carriers more ways for customers to buy and pay for high-end services, he said.

“Service providers need to put a range of payment options in place,” Hurley said, noting that many European carriers now offer multiple pre-pay and post-pay options. “I’ll be interested to see how this takes off in the U.S. There’s such a huge un-banked population in the U.S.”