Customers who’ve bought goods and services by adding the charge to their mobile phone bill tend to make further mobile purchases, according to a new study by payment provider mopay. The company analysed information from 300 of its clients, accounting for more than four million mobile transactions in over 80 countries during the past three years.

It found that more than 50% of purchases using direct-to-carrier billing were made by returning customers, suggesting that the convenience of the process encourages customers to keep using it. Overall, 55% of returning consumers completed more than five purchases using mobile payments.

mopay also noted that mobile payment traffic from direct-to-carrier billing grew almost four-fold in the survey period.

Kolja Reiss, managing director at mopay, said “Based on our data it’s clear that consumers are embracing direct-to-carrier billing as a way to make payments quickly and easily for the online services they use every day. Our data shows that half of direct-to-carrier billing purchases were made by returning customers. This indicates that once consumers try our payment approach, they realize just how easy it is to use and continue to use the payment method. As more organizations adopt direct-to-carrier billing and consumers realize this option exists, we anticipate these numbers will continue to rise in the future.”

More than half of mobile payments’ turnover came from the mobile gaming industry. There was also a dramatic increase in mobile payments from social networking: mopay noticed a six-fold increase in turnover, with payments from customers using social networks now accounting for over 5% of all mobile payment transactions.