Letters
Billing/Settlement Platform “InfoBilling Lite” to Support
Systems Integration and Platform Business Start-ups
Yuji Agawa†, Masami Ueno, Yasuhiro Iida, and Miyoshi Hanaki
Abstract
Most of the billing/settlement platforms available today target large-scale core systems and are very
expensive to deploy. We have developed a unique approach to billing logic, and used it as the basis of alightweight billing/settlement platform that by specializing in flat-rate billing functions can be deployedat much lower cost than other platforms that are currently available. The new platform could provide abilling and settlement solution for data centers or basic billing and settlement functions for e-commercebusinesses.

1. Introduction
The sheer number and variety of new businesses
springing up on the Internet continue to grow at aphenomenal pace. In order for these businesses to getup and running in a reasonably short amount of time,
all the systems upon which they are based are certainly not developed and built from scratch. Rather, it
is far more effective to combine the shared functions
that are typically required by such businesses: a user
management function, a content delivery function, auser authentication function, and so on. A billing/settlement platform is essentially an integrated solutionthat provides all of the shared functions associatedwith billing and settlement of payments.
Figure 1 illustrates how a billing/settlement platform might be used by a business. When a user buys
a product or service, the application providing theservice requests the billing/settlement platform toissue a bill. Upon receiving this request, thebilling/settlement platform registers the user who isto be billed, stores the billing data (known as billingtanking), generates request data, and sends the settlement data to a credit card clearing company. In addition, the platform also manages the receipt of payments from users, notification of receipt to the application providing the service, and reconciliation.
† NTT Information Sharing Platform Laboratories
Musashino-shi, 180-8585 Japan
E-mail: agawa.yuji@lab.ntt.co.jp

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Billing is generally based on a metered pricing
model such as charging 10 yen per 3 minutes of usage
according to a charge table that is established inadvance (metered billing), or based on a flat-rate pricing model such as charging 300 yen per purchase(flat-rate billing). And in terms of timing, bills can beissued for a one-time event (one-time billing) or canbe issued at regular periodic intervals such as amonthly billing for basic services (periodic billing).
The billing/settlement platforms that are available
on the market now offer a full range of sophisticatedcapabilities including metered billing and realtime
processing based on complex rate tables. However,the services requiring these sophisticated capabilities
are mainly just those of the phone service carriers andISPs (Internet Service Providers) for connection
charges, and these businesses constitute a very small
fraction of services that could make effective use of abilling and settlement platform. The overwhelming
majority of services use just a few of the functions
that are provided by the high-powered billing/settlement platforms that are on the market. More recently,
we have seen an increasing number of providers thatoffer services based on a simple, easy-to-understandflat-rate or price-per-event billing structure.
There is thus a significant demand for a cost-effective billing/settlement platform that provides simplebilling functions and is easy to deploy in starting up
new businesses and integrating systems.

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Letters■ User■ Service provider

Purchase

Service-provisioning
applications (purchase,download, reconciliation, etc.)

Provides contents, services

RequestNotification

Debit, payment
Fees■ Credit card companies,

Billing request

businesses, post offices,banks, etc.
Sales data

■ Platform provider

Deposit
Billing/settlement platform
Settlement data

■ Credit card clearing company

Fig. 1. Overview of how businesses might use the billing/settlement platform.

2. InfoBilling Lite
These considerations led NTT Information Sharing
Platform Laboratories to develop InfoBilling Lite asa fast, lightweight billing/settlement platform thatsupports flat-rate billing for business needs andfocuses on the specific functions needed for systems
integration and platform businesses.
Table 1 shows an overview of the functions that aresupported. As shown in Fig. 2, InfoBilling Lite consists of two basic modules: the billing server and thesettlement gateway.
The billing server provides a number of APIs
(Application Programming Interfaces) that support
users and provider registration, billing management,and system monitoring. By creating an interface on
the service-provisioning application side for linking
to InfoBilling Lite, the platform can interwork with adiverse range of different applications. More specifically, the billing server provides the following functions.
• Billing execution and billing storage.
• Immediate card and credit verification with thecredit card company when registering new users,
purchase authorizations with the credit card company at time of purchase, and the generation ofrequest data to be provided to the credit card clearing company.
• System management functions to administer andcontrol the system.
The primary functions of the settlement gateway
are managing credit card clearing companies, converting data into the respective formats of different
credit card companies, and transmitting data. TheVol. 1 No. 1 Apr. 2003

gateway is currently capable of credit card settlement
and billing for payments at convenience stores,banks, and other kinds of businesses, to facilitate therapid start-up of new businesses.
The functions required by a billing/settlement platTable 1. Functions.
Category
Function
Billing tanking functions
Service provider bills users
Periodic billing
One-time billing
Platform provider bills service provider
Periodic billing
One-time billing
Settlement, credit functions
Credit card payment
Immediate card credit acquisition function
Immediate authorization function
Batch authorization function
Authorization canceled
Reversal (card validity check)
Generate request data
Pay bills (company, bank, etc.)
Generate request data
Deposit result notification
System management functions
Batch automatic monitoring
Recovery function
Load distribution, redundant functions
Blocking
User management API/DB
User data management (registration, updating, etc.)
User data reservation processing
User data batch processing
Provider management API/DB
Service provider
Service provider data managementService provider manager data management
Platform provider
Platform provider data management
Platform provider manager data management
Billing management API/DB
Order data management (look up, modify, etc.)
Cancel periodic billing
Billing data management (look up, modify, etc.)
Request data management (look up, modify, etc.)
System monitoring API
Health-check function

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Fig. 2. System configuration.

Fig. 3. Player model.

form differ depending on the business model (e-commerce, B2B, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol),portal, etc.) and the service layer that is supported.
InfoBilling Lite is built around a “bill tanking function” as the basis of the billing function, and by separating the functions required by the different business model, the flexibility of the billing settlement
platform has been greatly enhanced.

model, two types of billing can occur: a service
provider can bill a user of the service or the platform
provider can bill a service provider. The platform thus
supports not only billing and settlement for EC malls,
content delivery services, and other Internet businesses, but also can be applied to billing and settlementproxy businesses through ISPs, data centers, andother platform providers. Table 2 shows some typicalservices that could be supported by the platform.

3. Application areas
4. Key features and technical aspects
Let us consider the InfoBilling Lite model shown inFig. 3 in which several service providers are registered under one platform provider. The end users arethen registered under the service providers. In this70

4.1 Reliable and expandable
Billing/settlement platforms demand a high degreeof reliability. InfoBilling Lite was designed with reliNTT Technical Review

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Table 2. Service examples.
Type of business

Service examples

Infrastructurebusinesses・xSP billing users fixed monthly basic charges and optional
usage-based charges.
・Platform providers billing service providers for use of thebilling platform.

Service businesses

・Billing for products purchased over the Net.
・Billing for music, images, articles, and other digital contents.
・Billing for lecture notes associated with e-learning.

Support businesses

・Billing for sales agency fees associated with auctions.
・Billing online advertising businesses for advertising fees.
・Billing for mediation services associated with e-markets.

ability in mind and features automatic monitoring ofbatch and other processing times, automatic recovery
in the event of a failure, preventative-maintenancehealth-check capabilities, system redundancy, andother safeguards to ensure the reliability of the platform. In addition, the system is not confined to a single server, but can be deployed as a load-distributed
configuration, which enables the platform to growalong with a company’s business.
4.2 Support for multiple types of credit card
merchant agreements
When a product or service is purchased with a credit card, the transaction must be authorized by thecredit card company. InfoBilling Lite supports multiple types of merchant agreements between a service
provider and a credit card company to enable time-ofsale authorizations when a user makes a purchase, orbatch authorizations that are processed on a monthly
basis. This provides billing and settlement support fora full range of purchases from more costly items(time-of-sale authorization) to the sale of digital contents that cost very little (monthly authorization).
4.3 Credit card clearing
As it becomes increasingly commonplace to buy

music and digital images and similar digital contents
for very small sums of money (micro-payments) overthe Internet, it is not practical to obtain authorizationfrom the credit card company every time a purchaseis made. What is required is a type of merchant association agreement for transactions without obtaining
authorization when the amount is below a certain predetermined threshold. This involves a processing procedure in which the credit card company verifies aregistered user’s credit card once a month (clearing),and InfoBilling Lite was designed to support this kindof processing.
4.4 Interworking with other platforms
As illustrated in Fig. 4, the InfoBilling Lite platform can be easily interconnected to other platforms
through the Platform Integration Environment developed by NTT’s Information Sharing Platform Laboratories. This enables new services to be rolled out
very quickly by linking billing and settlement, Intellectual properties management platform, and othershared function modules.
4.5 High-speed processing
The InfoBilling Lite architecture features multiplexed processing and limits the data being operatedFig. 4. Information distribution platform mediation function.

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on at one time. The platform thus achieves highspeed processing with minimal fall-off in performance as the volume of data increases.
4.6 Settlement gateway
The settlement gateway absorbs interface differences among credit card clearing companies, and thisenables the platform to interwork with most clearing
companies.

Yuji Agawa
Senior Research Engineer, Network Application Platform Project, NTT Information Sharing
Platform Laboratories.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Keio University, in 1990
and 1992, respectively. In 1992, he joined theNTT Network Information Systems Laboratories. Using his network operation management
experience, he is currently engaged in researchon billing-related systems. Mr. Agawa is a member of the Information Processing Society ofJapan.

5. Web server demonstration trials
Figure 5 shows a schematic of a billing/settlement
platform based on InfoBilling Lite that is being madeavailable on an experimental basis by NTT’s Information Sharing Platform Laboratories as an independent Web service*1. The trials will give us an opportunity to assess the service-related aspects and theperformance of the billing/settlement platform as aWeb service.
6. Conclusion
Billing and payment functions are indispensable
when services are offered on a commercial basis. By
continuing to apply these capabilities to the various
products and services developed by NTT ResearchLaboratories, we are working to achieve a comprehensive billing and settlement solution for services.

Masami Ueno
Research Engineer, Network Application Platform Project, NTT Information Sharing Platform
Laboratories.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Yamanashi University, in1991 and 1993, respectively. In 1993, he joined
the Software Laboratories, NTT Corporation.
Experience in requirements engineering led on to
his recent research area of billing-related systems. Mr. Ueno is a member of the Information
Processing Society of Japan.

Yasuhiro Iida
Research Engineer, Network Application Platform Project, NTT Information Sharing PlatformLaboratories.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees inapplied physics engineering from the Universityof Tokyo, in 1998 and 2000, respectively. In2000, he joined NTT Information Sharing Platform Laboratories. His recent research area isbilling-related systems and information security.
Mr. Iida is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.

Miyoshi Hanaki
Senior Research Engineer, Supervisor, Network Application Platform Project, NTT Information Sharing Platform Laboratories.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in information engineering from Kyoto University, in1983 and 1985, respectively. In 1985, he joined
the Electrical Communication Laboratories,
NTT Corporation. After OSS experience, hisrecent research area is billing-related systems.
Mr. Hanaki is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Institute ofElectronics, Information and Communication
Engineers, and the Information Processing Society of Japan.

Fig. 5. Billing/settlement web service.

*1 The concept of a Web service involves the dynamic linkage of various applications distributed over the network using data formatted in SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)/XML to provide asingle service.

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