Product Strategy / Case study
OTT Streaming Platform: 0→5M Subscribers, Payment Cost 50% → ~1%
Built the billing engine for Pakistan's leading OTT platform — Direct Carrier Billing across all four telcos, wallet-billing migration that pulled payment cost from 50% of revenue to ~1%, 0→5M paid subscribers, ARPU +70%, $10M+ ARR, expanded into UAE and KSA.
The operating decision, in context.
Owned monetisation for Pakistan's leading OTT platform and built the billing infrastructure that turned near-zero revenue into a commercially viable business. Launched Direct Carrier Billing across all four telcos, diagnosed the ~50% telco revenue share as the core constraint, and led the migration to wallet-based billing that pulled payment cost to ~1% — scaling to 5M+ paid subscribers, +70% ARPU and $10M+ ARR, then expanding DCB and wallet billing into UAE and KSA.
Evidence overview
What changed, and why it held.
Operator lensPayment cost is a product variable, not a procurement one. The rail mix decides whether a subscription business is viable.
~50%→~1%
~0→5M+
Baseline→+70%
The job to be done.
The subscription business was being eaten alive by payment cost: operator and aggregator margins consumed up to half of revenue, capping growth and ARPU. Acquisition needed a billing rail that reached users without cards, and the unit economics needed a structural fix, not a pricing tweak.
What I built.
- Direct Carrier Billing across all four major telcos, reaching subscribers without cards
- Wallet-billing migration that moved subscription billing off high-cost operator rails
- Retention improvements: faster refunds, wallet-native subscription management, reduced payment failures
- Pricing, bundles and wallet promotions that lifted ARPU 70%
- DCB and wallet-billing expansion into UAE and KSA with regional telco and wallet partners
Where I sat in the work.
Head of Project and Product at an OTT streaming platform. Owned payments product strategy, telco and wallet partner negotiation, and the cross-functional migration with growth, finance and engineering. Direct accountability for subscriber growth, payment cost and ARPU.
What moved.
- Scaled 0 → 5M paid subscribers in under three years
- Pulled payment cost from ~50% of revenue to ~1% via the wallet-billing migration
- Grew ARPU 70% through pricing, bundles and wallet promotions
- Reached $10M+ ARR and expanded DCB + wallet billing into UAE and KSA
What I chose against.
- Prioritised DCB reach for acquisition first, accepted the high operator margin early to unlock scale, then migrated to wallet billing to fix the economics
- Ran the wallet migration cohort by cohort rather than a hard cutover, slower headline shift, protected retention through the change
What carries into the next build.
- Payment cost is a product variable, not a procurement one. The rail mix decides whether a subscription business is viable.
- DCB wins acquisition in card-light markets; wallet billing wins the unit economics. You need both, in that order.
- Retention levers — faster refunds, wallet-native management, fewer failures — compound with ARPU pricing to make the model work.
Relevant beyond this one platform.
The transferable core: reaching users without cards through DCB, then fixing the rail economics with wallet billing before margin disappears. Every subscription, streaming and creator platform hits that same wall, inside every network, PSP and cross-border platform; only the logo changes.
Bring the context
Building through
real operating pressure?
Start with the decision, constraint or delivery problem in front of you. We can work out whether there is a useful fit.