Managing prepaid

Prepaid lets customers pay in advance to use a service, for example, voice or data. Each customer who uses prepaid must have an account in Smile.

You can restrict your prepaid offerings to customers on specific plans, or by time of day or week. For example, you may offer a prepaid deal that can only be used between midnight and 6am, or on a weekend or public holiday.

A subscription can be both prepaid and postpaid. You can configure prepaid so that it is consumed only after a customer uses their included monthly value.

You can use the following methods to add prepaid to a subscription:
  • vouchers—customers buy a prepaid voucher and redeem it at a later time.
  • operator entry—customers buy prepaid from a Smile operator.
  • CAT—customers buy prepaid through the Customer Access Toolkit.
  • API—customers buy prepaid through a custom application.
Note: You can use the prepaid API to write applications that let customers buy self-serve prepaid. For more information about the Smile API, see the Developer Guide.
Your Smile administrators can create two different types of prepaid:
  • prepaid units—for example, 5 GB or 100 minutes. This prepaid type expires when all the units are consumed or the expiry date of the prepaid block is reached.
  • prepaid length of time—for example, unlimited access for three months. This prepaid type expires when the prepaid expiry date is reached.

You can create prepaid for any type of unit except cost, for example, data, minutes or faxes. Smile does not support prepaid currency.