What is prepaid?

Prepaid is an innovative billing mechanism that requires the consumer to pay upfront for a particular service or product. The upfront payment is converted into credit, which can then be used against a particular prepaid plan or prepaid, recharge or top up product type. Prepaid services are also refereed to as recharge or top up in various countries across the world, and these terms can be used interchangeably. Until the charging concept of prepaid was introduced, providers required a trusted relationship with customers where the service could be charged in a post paid manner. A trusted relationship often requires the customer to have a credible billing history, the customer is required to provide documentation such as utility bills, bank statements, credit cards. The facts are that certain sectors of the population such as immigrants, students and low income earners are often not in a position to provide such documentation, they don’t wish to enter into contract commitments and therefore prepaid is a much more suitable mechanism for them. Developing nations have adopted prepaid, recharge and top up services in an enormous way. Without a credit history individuals can now have a service within minutes, and have total flexibility to renew or change their service.

Prepaid Billing Methodology
A method is disclosed for authorising a prepaid network service in a data network. A network end station issues a request for a prepaid network service. At a network node, a determination is made about whether a user associated with the end station is authorized to access the prepaid network service. Network traffic from the end station is forwarded to a service provider only when the user is authorized to use the prepaid network service. Specific embodiments provide message flows among a mobile station , gateway support node , router , and authentication server that support providing prepaid services in a packet-switched network for mobile communication. In certain embodiments, a connection is held open for an end station while a prepaid quota value is refreshed at a portal, thereby reducing overhead and precluding the need to repeat user logon