When it comes to collecting awards, Bango is on a roll this month. Firstly, CEO Ray Anderson was named Business Person of the Year at this year’s Business Excellence Awards, followed by Bango claiming the accolade of Product of the Year at the 2012 Cambridge Computer Lab Ring Hall of Fame Awards earlier this week.

The Business Excellence Awards, which are in their 19th year, crowned Ray Anderson Business Person of the Year in the Cambridge region. Ray was recognised for positioning Bango as a leader in mobile payments and analytics, driving new technology innovations and leveraging the growing commercial opportunity presented by the booming smartphone and tablet market. It’s not the first time Ray has been recognised as a leading entrepreneur and innovator, only a few years ago at the Mobile Entertainment Awards Ray collected a special award for his outstanding contribution to mobile entertainment.

Bango also picked up Product of the Year at the Cambridge Computer Lab Ring Hall of Fame Awards for both its leading mobile payment and analytics services. The Hall of Fame Awards were established by the Ring, which is the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory Graduate Association, to celebrate the success of companies founded by Computer Laboratory graduates, one of which is Ray Anderson.

“Our position today has been the result of hard work, innovation and passion from the whole team at Bango. It’s great to have these achievements recognized and have our name attached to an award that has previously been associated with other great Cambridge technology companies such as ARM, Autonomy, Abcam and CSR,” said Ray Anderson, CEO, Bango.

The Bango Nexus event is your unique opportunity to learn from leading HTML5 experts on how to develop for this exciting web technology. With developer focussed topics and interactive sessions, you’ll come away with key insights to help you build world class mobile web apps.

Web evangelist Patrick Lauke from Opera Software will be providing his views on the future of HTML5 and how Opera is supporting web app developments. Experts from Bango and Psonar will also help you get to grips with the capabilities and limitations of HTML5 and provide top hints and tips to mobile web app success.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How businesses are building their future on HTML5
• Problems associated with developing mobile web apps
• Top tips to building a successful mobile web app
• Difficulties moving from native to web apps
• Cloud computing in a mobile world

Bango Nexus starts at 6pm with pizza, beer and a chance to network before the sessions start. Delegate places are limited so make sure you register today. The event takes place in Cambridge, UK and all attendees will be entered into a free prize draw on the night to win the latest Kindle Fire Tablet.

For more information visit bango.com/nexus

Bango has won the ‘Best Transactions Provider’ at the Mobile Entertainment Awards 2011. Having been nominated for the sixth consecutive year, this is the third time Bango has picked up this prestigious ME award.

With Bango’s CEO Ray Anderson being recognised for Outstanding Contribution to the Mobile Industry in 2006, Bango went on to win the ‘Best Payment Provider’ in 2007, again in 2008, and now in 2011, a testament to the continued growth of Bango’s pioneering payments platform.

Bango received the award in recognition of its success as a leading payment provider for app stores, including BlackBerry App World, and its rapidly expanding direct operator billing connections, micro payment capabilities and payment reporting which links to its successful analytics products.

Martin Harris, SVP Strategic Accounts, who collected the award on behalf of Bango, said, “The competition in the Best Transaction Provider category included other big named players such as Ericsson IPX, OpenMarket and TxtNation, so we are proud to have been recognised by our industry peers and selected as the best in the business again this year.”

Held in London the awards show is one of the world’s key mobile entertainment industry events, attracting over 300 senior professionals to celebrate innovation and success in the mobile content space.

Bango would like to thank the voting panel of around 400 execs from all sectors of the industry for choosing us as the Best Transactions Provider 2011.

Bango’s unique technology and operator relationships, plus millions of consumer profiles worldwide, enable businesses and developers to market and sell digital content more effectively to mobile device users.

With over 5 billion mobile phones worldwide, Bango Payment technology leverages operator billing, credit cards, PayPal plus unique ‘social payment’ functionality, enabling any phone user to purchase content and services from their device using the optimum payment method available to them.

Content and services are becoming digitized at an ever increasing rate and the internet usage model is becoming dominated by mobile devices. Bango is a key technology provider in this evolving, fast growing, global industry.

This latest accolade is a testament to the longevity of the Bango technology and business that launched the idea of mobile payments for internet-enabled phones in many markets. Bango continues to pioneer new payment technologies to meet the growing demand for digital content and services from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The Bango platform is emerging as the mobile industry’s “open market” alternative to Apple iTunes for payments, powering major app stores such as BlackBerry App World.

Bango scored a hat trick to claim the award for Best Billing Provider at the 2007 and 2008 ME Awards and in 2006 CEO Ray Anderson picked up the most prestigious award of the evening for his “Outstanding contribution to mobile entertainment”.

Organized and hosted by Mobile Entertainment magazine, the ME Awards celebrate innovation and achievement in the mobile content space and the winners are chosen by a voting panel of several hundred industry executives.

This year’s ME Awards will be held on 23rd November in, London. Bango will be in attendance with everything crossed!

Bango announces that it provides Mobcast, the digital book software platform, with operator billing for its mobile digital bookshop GoSpoken.com. This means book-loving customers worldwide have the option to quickly and easily pay for eBooks and place the charge on their phone bill. The Bango charge-to-bill technology even works when the device connects over Wi-Fi.

Mobcast developed GoSpoken.com after spotting the potential offered by the increasing numbers and capabilities of mobile phones. With thousands of bestseller titles available on the digital bookshop, customers are able to purchase eBooks and audio books from the extensive catalogue and download them across their phone, PC, tablet or eReader from as little as 50p / 50¢.

Bango enables GoSpoken.com customers to place a charge on their phone bill for purchases made directly from the mobile version of the digital bookshop. This click-to-pay consumer experience is seamless and secure, maximizing conversion rates for purchases from connected phones and tablets across multiple platforms and networks including Wi-Fi.

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”, said Stephen Crawford, Operations Director at Mobcast. “Over 50% of our customers read with their Android phone 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. 75% of our customers choose operator billing through Bango, and no other billing solution lets our smartphone customers simply click-to-pay without additional registration.”

Operator billing provides customers with the quickest and easiest way to pay for content and services from their mobile device. We see an average of 70% payment conversion through operator billing compared to 40% for credit card”, said Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing at Bango. “The customer experience is crucial and with operator billing a simple single-click is all that’s required to make a purchase.”

Bango provides Mobcast with detailed payment reports to track their revenues and see conversion rates for all purchases. In addition, Bango delivers insightful information about their customers, including country, network, device type and status of billing transactions, enabling Mobcast to provide an optimized service to their customers.

Having anticipated the market for digital books to mobile devices years ago, Mobcast is now a successful platform for digital books on both sides of the Atlantic. As it continues to grow through product innovation, Bango supports Mobcast by providing its leading billing solution.