Bango Wi-Fi On-Bill payment boosts mobile content sales by 25%

Bango, the leading mobile payment [1]and analytics [2] company, today announced Wi-Fi enabled operator billing for smartphones. While mobile operator payments deliver significantly more successful transactions, than traditional payment methods, mobile content revenues have been impacted by the increasing popularity of smartphones, such as Blackberry and iPhone. Because these devices can connect to the web through Wi-Fi, operator billing that normally relies on traffic coming through operator gateways, becomes unavailable, making it difficult for consumers to buy content.

In response, Bango has developed an innovative technology that delivers the optimal operator on-bill payment [1]experience to every mobile phone, even when consumers connect through Wi-Fi. Bango’s new Wi-Fi on-bill payment delivers the highest conversion rates and enables both operators and content providers to capture revenue from this growing segment of their customer base.

“We have worked hard to make the content buying experience both easy and trusted by opening up our on-bill payment services to our customers. An increasing proportion of subscribers are choosing Wi-Fi connectivity at home or in specific locations, to augment our 3G connectivity,” said Mike Short, VP of Telefonica Europe. “This innovation by Bango, one of our accredited payment intermediaries with Payforit, brings the benefits of tried and trusted operator billing to subscribers, even when they connect over Wi-Fi.”

“Over 25% of our customers have a Blackberry or Windows Mobile phones and an increasing number are using Wi-Fi for the faster connection speeds on offer – they can now buy the same way as everyone else”, said Steve Crawford, Operations Director of the mobile e-book and audio book company GoSpoken.com. “By using Bango to deliver a consistent operator payment experience to all our customers we have seen a marked increase in sales. Conversion rates using operator billing are much higher than using other methods, and easier for our consumers. No other billing solution lets our smartphone customers simply click to pay.”

“An increasing number of our customers are using smartphones and connect via Wi-Fi to access mobile content, said Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic. “ With the new Bango Payment technology we can now give them the speed and convenience of familiar operator billing and greatly helping to increase our potential revenue.”

Smartphones represent the fastest growing mobile phone segment. 38.1 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2009 (Gartner). Until now smartphone users were redirected to credit card instead of placing charges on their phone bill, leading to lost sales and lower conversion rates. Many marketers selling content and services exclude smartphone users from their ad campaigns due to their inability to effectively monetize users. According to Nokia’s VP of product management, George Linardos, operator billing immediately increases sales by 70%, making this a significantly more attractive marketplace.

“At Bango we strive to offer the most advanced technology to promote the best possible mobile web experience,” said Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango. “Only Bango has the ability to provide smartphone users with consistent, easy, click-to–pay billing across Wi-Fi and operator connections. This new service gives the highest possible conversion rate for the content provider, resulting in additional revenue from end users.”

The mobile payments industry was worth an estimated US$25billion in 2008, according to Informa. The mobile web user demands a simple and consistent user interface on their small screen device. Payment flows need to be highly optimized to ensure maximum yields. Bango’s new Wi-Fi On-Bill payment service gives smartphone and Wi-Fi connected users a fast and convenient way to pay for content and services.

To view Bango’s Wi-Fi on-bill payment experience visit www.bango.com/wifibilling [3]