The rise of app stores and the growth of the open mobile web have largely cut mobile operators out of the mobile content game. The smart ones, though, are trying to show they still have a role when it comes to services built around that content. Mobile payments is one of the most important of those services, and today carriers in France and Korea are getting a little closer to a piece of that action.
Today, Boku, which has a bit of technology that enables people to make payments for goods on their phones by entering only their phone numbers, announced two deals that brings its services to France and Korea:
— In France, it’s inked a deal with the French Association of Mobile Multimedia (AFMM) and the three big French mobile operators that lead it, Bouygues Telecom, Orange France and SFR. The AFMM, founded in 2005, counts as members several smaller mobile operators in the country such as Auchan Telecom, Debitel, NRJ Mobile, Omer Telecom, as well as publishers and other service providers, so this agreement will essentially cover almost all of France’s 55 million mobile users.
— In Korea, Boku has signed a deal with Mobilians, which works with various content providers to enable mobile payments on their sites, to be enable a service for people to use their mobile telephone numbers to make the payments.
Both deals are only part of the package, though. In France and Korea, the service will only work on sites that have enabled the Boku payment mechanism; and in Korea, Boku will have to also make agreements with operators to activate the service, so that the payments get made directly to the users’ mobile bills. Boku says it already has deals with all the mobile carriers in Korea.
And this can’t be used for everything: Boku says the service is usually only for purchases made under the $10 mark.
The deals add to Boku’s expanding list of clients, which also includes AT&T (NYSE: T), Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and Facebook (where you can buy credits for Facebook games and make that charge directly to your mobile bill by entering your telephone number).
Boku is backed by VCs that include Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, DAG Ventures and Andreesen Horowitz.

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