The term “Pay Per Call” has two completely different definitions.
The original meaning
Pay Per Call, also known as premium rate phone numbers, was made popular in the 1980s by the 900 phone number industry, and that was its only meaning until 2005. Companies would get a 900 (premium rate) number, and their customers would call to listen to recorded messages and information, or sometimes to speak with live operators such as psychic readers. The phone companies that hosted the 900 numbers did the billing for these premium services, and customers were billed on their phone bill. They didn’t need to enter a credit card or any other form of payment, because the phone company billed them at a per-minute rate set by the company providing the information or entertainment.
Phone carriers started dropping out of the 900 number business in 2002 with AT&T, and Verizon was the last carrier to end 900 numbers in the US. It has stayed that way ever since. For more on the end of 900 numbers, see The Rise and Fall of the 1-900 Number.
In the final years of 900 numbers, one big service provider for the premium rate number industry was paypercall.com, which started in 1996. That is part of the reason for the confusion and debate today about what Pay Per Call actually means.
The modern meaning
The newer and more popular definition of Pay Per Call was launched in 2005 by Ingenio. They trademarked the term Pay Per Call for their newly launched marketing and bidding platform, an adaptation of pay-per-click advertising models like Google AdWords.
Invoca and Ringba are a couple of the companies that dominate the Pay Per Call marketing industry today. (Invoca answers common questions about pay-per-call marketing here.)
Where Paid Connections fits
Companies such as PaidConnections.com, PayPerCall.com and a small handful of others offer Pay Per Call services in the original meaning, not the marketing platforms of the modern meaning. The service also goes by paid chat, paid communications, paid connections and bill per call, to name a few.
These companies no longer use premium rate 900 numbers that bill the customer’s phone bill. Instead, they’ve built platforms that let customers pay for calls by entering credit card information through an IVR phone system, or they provide an online payment page and then dial out to the customer and the advisor and connect them in a live conversation. The platform times the call, and the customer is billed according to the payment settings agreed to in advance. Today the more advanced platforms are adding online chat and video to the paid conversation model.
This type of service badly needs a new, universally accepted term. Back in 2005, when Ingenio trademarked Pay Per Call for their marketing platform, the BillPerCall.com developers rebranded their platform to separate Pay Per Call marketing, where companies pay for lead-generated phone calls, from Bill Per Call, where the customer pays for the call to get information or entertainment from the business they’re calling.
This is a relatively small niche industry without any massive companies dominating it. That started to change gradually after the Covid-19 pandemic forced many people to work from home, or to lose their jobs and look for new work-from-home opportunities.
In 2021, BillPerCall.com (Help by Phone LLC) rebranded with a new platform that added paid chat and paid video to its services, under the new name PaidConnections.com (Paid Communications LLC). The name is a better fit as the industry moves toward fewer phone calls and more chat and video.