Spanish texters paid for appy talk

The notion that you could earn cold hard cash by sending text messages to your mates may seem too good to be true but a Spanish company has developed an app which pays people up to €25 a month as long as they agree to look at banner ads while they’re texting.

For several years mobile phone companies all over the world have been under fierce – not to mention wholly deserved – pressure as smartphone technology has eroded their business model. Viber, Skype and What's App are just three of the most well known services which allow phone users to text and talk for nothing.

All told, mobile phone operators lost a staggering $23 billion in text message revenue last year  to smartphone apps which send messages over the internet at no cost.

But actually paying people to use free texting services may kill them off altogether or at least force them to live with profits which are considerably more modest than they used to be.  

The Chad2Win app was developed by a Barcelona-based company and while it was only launched last month it has already attracted close to 100,000 users. All these early adapters are being given a cent for each ad they look at and three times amount if the click on it.

Mind you it is not easy to reach the maximum monthly payment of €25 and to get there a user would have to click on more than 800 ads or nearly 30 different banners every single day.

Experts who have looked at the business model have suggested that most normal users are unlikely click enough ads to make themselves more than €10 a month

Volkswagen, Panasonic and Spanish lender Caixabank have all agreed to advertise on the app which is only available in Spain. It does not appear to have wowed users and has a three star rating among android users while those who have signed up using their iPhones have decided it is only worth two-and-a-half stars out of a possible five.