Apple carrier billing picks up new providers in UK, Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere

Image showing an App Store teaser graphics

Apple has expanded the iTunes carrier billing option to additional providers in more than a half dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Italy.

According to an updated Apple support document listing the current mobile phone billing providers, this feature has now expanded to the following wireless carriers:

  • Italy (TIM)
  • Latvia (Bite)
  • Lithuania (Bite)
  • Malaysia (U Mobile)
  • Singapore (Singtel and StarHub)
  • Switzerland (Sunrise)
  • United Kingdom (O2)

This is in addition to the existing providers that support carrier billing in these countries.

TUTORIAL: How to set up carrier billing

With carrier billing, any app, media or subscription purchases get charged to your phone bill.

Before today’s expansion, carrier billing support in the aforementioned markets was limited to Wind Tre in Italy; Tele2 in Latvia and Lithuania; Celcom, Digiand Maxis in Malaysia; M1 Limited in Singapore; Swisscom in Switzerland; and EE in the UK.

The handy feature is supported in dozens of countries globally.

If you live in a supported country but mobile phone billing is currently unavailable for you, Apple supports a number of other payment methods that you can use to pay for your purchases made in content stores like App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes Store and iBooks Store.

As of yesterday, for instance, Dutch users can take advantage of the newly added support for iDEAL, an online-only payment service popular in The Netherlands, and use it to purchase apps, media and subscriptions with local banks instead of a credit card, debit card or PayPal.