Global carrier billing to leverage smartphone take-off
Bango Inc. announced that it has further expanded its mobile payment platform by adding carrier billing in Canada. This brings the total number of subscribers it reaches through carrier billing in North America to over 200 million. Bango additionally provides mobile credit card and PayPal for payments that cannot be charged to the carrier bill.
Bango mobile payment technology is designed to enable the migration of e-commerce services from desktop PCs to the mobile phone and tablets. Developers and publishers using the Bango platform to reach their mobile customers benefit from one-click payment to the carrier phone bill.
App store providers and content publishers connect their services once to the Bango platform and reach over 600 million paying mobile users worldwide, in 120 countries. Mobile payments are benefiting from the take-off in smartphone usage, led initially by the iPhone. However Apple requires all payments to be made through iTunes. But with smartphones becoming so popular, merchants are able to use the Bango platform to enable mobile payment for products sold on BlackBerry, Android, Nokia and other platforms.
Outside Apple’s walled garden, direct carrier billing for apps and mobile web content has replaced premium SMS as the payment standard for mobile commerce”, said Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing at Bango. “Driven by the greater flexibility and reliability of direct carrier charging, the growth opportunity for m-commerce is enormous as usage of internet services migrates on mass from PCs to billions of mobile devices.”
Bango allows users to place charges on their phone bills for purchases made directly from the mobile device, including tablets. Bango’s mobile device billing is automatically authenticated through its partnerships with mobile carriers. This click-to-pay consumer experience is seamless and secure, maximizing conversion rates for purchases from connected phones and tablets.
This year we are opening-up mobile billing in Latin America and key Asian territories, and forecast coverage of 1 billion paying customers by year end – greater reach than any e-commerce system,” said Malhotra. “Bango self-optimizes on-line payment from both smartphones and feature phones, meaning one connection to Bango delivers mobile payment worldwide.”
Bango pioneered the mobile payments market by delivering carrier billing for content and services with Vodafone in 2004, AT&T in 2005, Orange in 2006, Telefonica in 2007, Sprint in 2008 and T-Mobile in 2009. In 2010 Bango delivered carrier billing for application developers distributing through the BlackBerry app store, enabling in-app payments charged to the phone bill. The company is the leading provider of next generation mobile payments from apps and the mobile web, benefiting from consumers who make purchases from their smartphones and other mobile devices.
