The rise of alternative payment methods worldwide brings benefits for both individuals and businesses. With a huge increase of digital transactions in the last decade, alternative payment methods offer the opportunity for merchants and telcos to boost their revenues and engage with their customers. The need to adapt to this new era, where there is no single best payment method, but an aggregation of different ones, is now a must. In this article we disclose some of the main benefits for businesses and end-users of payment methods such as mobile money or direct carrier billing.