Payments without getting up from your couch, drinking beer with friends

Good day, habrasociety.

For a long time I’ve been watching articles on Habré and for some reason no one has written about an interesting service called Special Advance Account, which has long been provided by one of the mobile operators. The name of the operator is Vimpelcom OJSC, or, popularly, simply Beeline.

The name of the service is usually abbreviated as САС, under this name it is displayed in the Personal Area of cellular subscribers.

The general meaning of the service is that thanks to it, subscribers of the mobile operator can make payments and purchases using their own phone and also from their own balance, however, there are small “buts” and “ifs,” but the main purpose of the service is this. Let’s now take a closer look at all of this.

The service is provided through a network of partners who can use their imagination and come up with what they can offer Vimpelcom OJSC subscribers.
In my opinion, within the framework of the CAS service, several partners are distinguished: MOBI.Money and Mobile Payment, which is divided into three sub-services: movie tickets , railway tickets and actually payments for various services . CAC is also used by the popular social network VKontakte to pay for votes via SMS, if you select numbers 8454 and 8455 for payment.

MOBI.Money.

The highlight of this partner is that it can make payments not only from the accounts of Vimpelcom subscribers, but also from bank cards, bypassing VimpelCom billing and many services, due to this, it is available to subscribers of some other mobile operators.

Tell me, why do I even need to make payments from my mobile phone account if I can do the same with a bank card or, for example, with WebMoney? The answer is simple: for a large number of people in Russia, banks, with their accounts, are a global and "muddy" evil. To use, it’s wiselyto use a bank account, you need to understand many details of its use, you need to go to conclude an agreement, monitor the status of the account, and much more. With a mobile account, it’s a little simpler: you need to monitor the status of the account in the same way, but you can check its status with a few hand movements (now this is for VimpelCom, USSD command * 102 #), you can top up your account almost anywhere (and in in many cases, interest-free), there is no need to go somewhere and conclude an agreement with the bank, and you don’t need to pay the bank for the contents of the account either, and to make a payment it’s enough to send a USSD command, either send an SMS message or perform the necessary manipulations on the partner’s website.

Back to the MOBI.Money. This service allows you to pay for services for the Internet, Mobile communications and services such as flower delivery or payment for the services of some hosting providers (on the site you can find a huge list).
Payment is made quite conveniently: choose the service provider you want to pay, then enter your mobile phone number and the necessary information for the payment (the composition of the information fields depends on the specific service provider). Next, you need to get a password in the form of SMS and enter it.
Confirm payment.

Also, payment can be easily made using SMS messages, additional information on the message format and the number where to send it can be found at the bottom of the page for each of the paid services.

I often pay for Yota services, as I use it from time to time, and I pay for Unlimited Internet only for one day.

Let's move on to the next major partner.

Mobile payment.

As I said above, this partner is divided into several subservices. The first allows you to buy tickets at the Karo-Film cinema chain.

Mobile payment. Movie.

Ordering a ticket is quite simple (I describe how it was about a year and a half ago).
Choose a movie ... Then click "Buy a ticket" or immediately select the session that interests you. Further, if you are not yet authorized in the system, then you will be asked to enter your phone number and get a password for access. Enter the phone number and click "get password". We receive SMS on the phone in which your password will be indicated, enter it. Now we select the seats in the hall and click "pay". That's all ... Now you will receive an SMS with the order number and you just have to say this number at the box office of the cinema and they will be given your tickets. By the way, a friend of mine said that for some reason his tickets were not given to him because he was late for the session (five minutes) and his tickets were sold to others, and they did not want to return the money spent. Now everything is possible differently, but still try to come before the start of the session.
Now I’ll tell you when this service was useful to me.

I had a girlfriend and some kind of film came out, and as you know, most of the films will be released on Thursday. So ... a working day, a lot of work, and it was not clear whether we could even go. Somewhere at 6 p.m. I seemed to have resolved what I wanted, and I learned from the girl how she was doing. She, too, basically finished. When the question arose of going to the cinema, it immediately became clear that an hour's drive to our beloved cinema was already 19 hours (knowing how I usually leave the office, it meant 19:30). And there it’s already clear - it’s not a fact that we will take tickets for the evening session, even if for the last one (not to be confused with night ones). I climbed onto this site and ran through the sessions and “lo and behold” there are several places. I made an order and "I'm on a horse." Upon arrival, the girl is surprised and we are satisfied, well, I certainly was pleased with the end of the evening;).

Mobile payment. Tickets

Interesting enough service for buying train tickets.
Everything is simple. We indicate the city from which and to which you want to get. Next, indicate one of the possible trains. Next is the type of car. If there are places, then indicate them for the order. Fill in the fields according to the identification document (passport, birth certificate or something else). We get the password for authentication on the site, we pay. Tickets can be picked up at one of the ticket offices - do not forget the identification document.

Mobile payment.

I see no reason to describe, the use of this service is similar to the use of MOBI.Money.

The rest (all sorts of underwater pebbles).

“Physicists” and “Eureka” ... postpeidniki and prepeydey.

The first thing I want to say this is that this service is provided only to individuals, i.e. Legal entities will not be able to use this service.

There are still differences between the use of the service by postpaidniks and lecturers.
Postpaydnikov need to connect the service manually (connected using the command * 110 * 271 #) and replenish the Special Advance Account. It’s quite simple to replenish SAS, you just need to indicate your phone number when adding to Beeline’s mobile account, and instead of the first nine indicate six, for example, if the number is +7 (903) 1234567890, then you need to specify +7 (603) 1234567890 ... when replenishing via the cashier must say that you want to replenish the Special Advance Account.

It is easier for the traders ... The САС service is activated automatically for them at the first attempt to use the service. The traders can use both funds located on the CAC and funds on the main account. You can find out your balance on CAC (at the moment) using the USSD command * 222 #.

All for an adult.

The САС service has some chips from bank billing, such as FROD.
Depending on what you are paid for, the service may limit you in the number of payments for a certain period, there is also a limit on the total amount of payments for different periods of time, for example, per day or per week. The bad thing is that if when working with a bank account, you can call the bank and ask to remove restrictions or increase the limit, then with SAS you will have to honestly wait until this period ends.

There is still a restriction on the use of the starting balance and the minimum amount that you must have on your mobile account after making the payment.
Starting balance is what you should spend on communication services (outgoing calls, SMS and Mobile Internet). And even if you have already replenished the account several times, but have not used up this balance (now it is 150 rubles), it is still considered that you did not use it up.
The minimum amount (now it’s 10 rubles) is what should remain on your mobile account after making a payment, for example, you have 200 rubles in your account and the payment will cost 191 rubles, then the payment will not work, but if the payment is 189 then everything is OK.

Money from САС can be returned to a mobile account and vice versa transferred from a mobile account to САС.
Funds on SAS can be blocked for use - generally blocked, you can only transfer funds to your mobile account.

Also, when making some purchases, you will have to confirm the desire to make a payment through the USSD menu (the operator’s network lifts it yourself), or using a special SMS response to the number (8464), an SMS with the request to confirm the intention will come if you ignore the USSD menu.

My personal opinion.

In most cases, I do not consider CAC as an alternative to a Bank card, although there have been cases when it was easier and more practical from the phone. For example, I somehow paid for a domain :), but I always pay for the Internet, because I always forget to do this through the terminal ... although through the phone, if you take into account the commission, it turns out cheaper.

I also indicated above that payments with MOBI.Money and Mobile Payment are the same ... They are the same and not at the same time: for the most part whose services can be paid for the same, but often the commission is different, so the services are competitors.
Both on MOBI.Money and on Mobile payment, the password that you received once to enter the site can be reused. Favorite payment services are also available and you can see and repeat what was done earlier.

That's all ... and successful payments without getting up from your couch.