BOKU Launches New Online Payments Service for Mobile Consumers

BOKU has announced the launch of a new mobile payments service, along with the acquisition of both Paymo and Mobillcash businesses — two leading providers in the global mobile payments industry.

According to BOKU, its mobile payments service “enables global consumers to make online purchases of digital and virtual goods with their mobile phones. The company is creating a new standard for mobile transactions by bringing bank-grade mobile payments to the Web, and enables merchants and publishers to provide fast and reliable mobile payments to over 1.6 billion consumers globally. In a related announcement today, the company raised $13 million in venture funding led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures, and unveiled its management team.”

“We’re thrilled to unveil BOKU. Our vision is to provide a new industry standard for mobile payments, bringing ease, accessibility and security to the market,” stated Mark Britto, CEO for BOKU. “The strength of these two acquisitions and our recent financing will help us strategically to enable global consumer adoption and accelerate global carrier coverage.”

“A cross-carrier mobile payments system is necessary to increase the range of merchants willing to make goods and services available over mobile devices,” said Aaron McPherson, Practice Director for Financial Insights, an IDC company. “The combination of BOKU, Mobillcash and Paymo is a significant step forward toward this goal.”

BOKU will allow over 1.6 billion potential consumers to access BOKU mobile payments to purchase virtual goods on websites and in games in 50+ countries. The companies’ combined reach, technology and teams will provide a mobile payment platform unmatched by any other offering in the market today.

Watch a demonstration of how easy and safe it is to pay using BOKU. (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2514267C311EB75A)

The market for online payments via mobile is being driven by the rapid, global growth of social networks, virtual goods and games, the popularity of mobile applications, and the large number of unbanked customers who have access to mobile phones, but not credit cards or bank accounts: With over 1 billion applications served, the iPhone has changed how people use and relate to their phones; The virtual goods and gaming market is worth $8 billion today and growing; On Facebook, 200 million users can now access 135 thousand virtual applications and games; The gap between the banked and underbanked is large, with 4 billion mobile phones but only 2 billion bank accounts worldwide.