Boku, one of the leaders in carrier billing, has finally signed a direct billing deal with Sprint, giving it direct integration with all four major U.S. operators. The broad coverage should make it more appealing to merchants and open up potential sales of non-digital goods. Read more »
Boku, which recently introduced a white label platform called Boku Accounts with Mastercard that allows operators to offer in-store mobile payment services, has received $35 million in new funding from New Enterprise Associates and Telefonica Digital, to help it go after offline payments. Read more »
Boku up until now has been known for enabling carrier billing for online goods. But the San Francisco payment start-up is leaping into the physical world with the launch of a new white label offering for carriers that will include in-store payments. Read more »
The consumer draw of free apps over paid apps has been well-documented, and so has the rise of in-app payments as a route to making money fr… Read more at paidContent »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile payments start-up Boku has signed a deal with Telefonica, the huge mobile carrier with almost 300 million subscribers, who will use Boku to power its payment API for BlueVia, its global developer program. It comes a week after Boku secured deals with two French carriers. Read more »
Mobile payments — payments initiated by a phone for a transaction at a physical point of sale or online — will total over $750 billion worldwide by 2015, and many predict they will soon begin to replace a typical credit card transaction. This report analyzes and forecasts the mobile payments industry, from its current technologies to the companies implementing them and the trends we can expect in the coming months. Much of the near-term growth of mobile payments will be driven by near-field communication (NFC) technology, but QR and 2D bar codes, mobile POS systems and SMS transactions are also important platforms for companies to consider when creating business models and strategies. Meanwhile, services from the likes of MasterCard, Nokia, Amazon and Google offer examples for others to follow and clues into the future of the industry. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Research in Motion, T-Mobile, Zong and Groupon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Offering freemium versions of mobile apps is a now a full-fledged trend, so shouldn’t all app developers employ the model? Not so fast. The strategy has worked, but it requires understanding of both the market and your product, along with careful thought, planning and a willingness ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
AT&T is rolling out a trial of direct carrier billing with Zong, BilltoMobile and Boku. The trial represents the biggest push to date for direct mobile billing, which allows a consumer to buy a product and bill it directly to their wireless bill. Read more »
Developers looking to make a buck on Android in-app purchases will be heartened to hear that Papaya Mobile is the first to deploy Zong’s in-app payment system for its social gaming platform. The deal opens a new era for Android developers waiting for in-app purchase solutions. Read more »
On a panel of mobile payments providers at GigaOM’s Mobilize 2010, everyone was happy to agree that mobile payments are finally getting their day in the sun due to the growth of smartphones, mobile application platforms, and the sheer market size of 5 billion phones. Read more »
Set to be worth $633.4 billion by 2014, mobile payments are finally finding their stride — but it’s not just one stride. Here’s your guide to the most promising emerging options in the space — carrier billing, mobile wallets, point of sale, mobile banking, in-app purchases ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Zong and Boku, the mobile payments competitors, have found a new place to go head-to-head: the Android platform. Both companies are today announcing trials of support for in-app transactions on the iPhone, billed to users’ mobile carriers securely. Read more »
Mobile payments are an incredibly promising phenomenon, so much so that the top venture capital firms are lining up against each other for a fight. Now, the teams are basically complete, with newcomer VC firm Andreessen Horowitz taking its spot next to San Francisco-based Boku. Read more »
Here’s a company you should be paying attention to, if you’re not already: Zong, the mobile payments startup, said today it’s raised $15 million in a round led by Matrix Partners and is now fully spun off from Switzerland-based Echovox. Read more »
The worldwide online market for digital goods will grow amid a state of continuous disruption across all forms of content markets. Fueled by an ever-growing user base, migration from physical formats to digital distribution, and a proliferation of new connected devices, the overall market for digital goods will grow to $36 billion by 2014, up from $16.7 billion in 2009. This report examines the state of paid content and the various monetization and payment models across each of the various digital goods markets. The report examines key players and market dynamics in the film and video, newspaper, online game, music and social networks space relative to their paid content strategies, and includes a revenue forecast of each of these segments relative to the overall paid content market. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
