Bango’s 100th operator connection was in Columbia, connecting Telefónica subscribers into BlackBerry World. Those subscribers can now pay for digital goods and services without needing cards, pre-registered accounts or having to send SMS messages, instead they pay with one-click operator billing, charging purchases to their phone bill. This 100th connection means that Bango now has active connections in 47 countries, including the leading mobile operators in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and many more, and extends Bango’s reach to more than one billion mobile subscribers.

Bango’s strategy is to work with mobile operators to launch direct operator billing to app stores and brands. Bango focuses on key operator partnerships within local markets, which enables partners to offer paid content where it was not previously viable. Existing app store connections include Facebook, BlackBerry, Google Play and others.

Most recently, Bango has signed a global partnership with Telefónica Digital, creating an enhanced direct-to-bill payment experience for mobile app stores. The partnership combines Bango’s frictionless payment experience with Telefónica’s BlueVia Payment APIs, connecting over 314 million chargeable customers worldwide to the Bango Payments Platform.

Bango is emerging as the de facto payment standard on the mobile web. Bango’s pervasive presence across the mobile web, billing for app stores, publishers and mobile operators, enables Bango to automatically identify more mobile users, creating a massive platform effect for its partners. As a result, Bango maximizes the number of one-click payments presented on mobile devices, producing significantly higher rates of collection. This platform effect is Bango’s competitive advantage in the fast growing mobile payments industry.

As consumer spend migrates online and mobile devices see mass adoption, all modes of mobile payment are seeing a rise in usage. Operator billing is enjoying perhaps the biggest rise, as it capitalizes on the credit relationship in place between the mobile operator and the phone user. It’s a rare ace card in the hands of operators, who have watched as the app economy has unlocked a world of commerce “over the top” of their networks, while denying them a slice of these transactions. Operator billing is allowing them to fight back, while offering a truly frictionless payment experience to the user.

As smartphones continue their rapid penetration in the developing world, bringing the often quoted “next billion” online, this ace card will become increasingly important. In young smartphone markets, such as those in Latin America and India, penetration of bank accounts and payment cards is very low. Here, a user’s operator connection may be the only credit relationship in place. Bango expects much of its future growth to be generated from these emerging markets.

Commenting on the 100 operator connection milestone, Bango VP of Operations Karen Oakley said,

“I’m immensely proud of the integration team which has driven us to the magic number 100. There is unprecedented energy now behind operator billing, as we unlock the win/win of frictionless payment flows and improved conversion rates. Much of my team’s focus is now on emerging markets, and we’re working hard to connect operators across Latin America, India and other parts of Asia.”

*Editor’s Note: By 28th March 2013, Bango had progressed to 105 live operator connections.

The inaugural FinTech 50 Watchlist is based on the expertise of the Watchlist Panel, ten industry leaders from across the financial services and technology industry. The panel convened at the end of 2012 to debate and select the top companies that demonstrate the potential to become a “game-changer” in financial technology or the competitive staying power to continue being one.

Financial technology is a tremendous growth sector in Europe, and it’s not just the traditional players getting in on the act. Entrepreneurs and established companies from different backgrounds are using technology to transform financial services across the board: from consumer finance to payments to whole new verticals such as peer-to-peer lending and crowd-funding.

Bango enjoyed a tremendous 2012, a year in which the company reached 90 operator connections, 200 million billable identities and several marquee partnerships, including Facebook, Microsoft and Telefónica Digital. Providing mobile payment for most of the world’s largest app stores, Bango is emerging as the de-facto standard for payments on the mobile web.

Both current and new investors have taken part in the fundraising which was oversubscribed, demonstrating a high level of support for Bango in the financial markets. The funding is expected to complete following a general meeting of the Bango shareholders on 25th February 2013.

Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango, comments:

“Bango has made significant progress through 2012 and into 2013, with a total reach now exceeding 1 billion mobile phone users. We have executed on our plan to support a significant scaling-up in future transaction volumes; making key hires to boost our executive and operational team and investing in our technology platform. We have also seen good development across our key metrics, with analytics transaction volume doubling again during 2012 and end user spend growth resuming towards the end of 2012 and into 2013.

“We believe emerging markets represent an exciting growth opportunity for us, and are seeing increasing interest from key customers in these areas, in particular in Brazil, Latin America, India and other parts of Asia. This fundraise provides us with the resources to move forward in developing those opportunities and we are confident that the massively smooth user experiences enabled by our unique technology platform, extensive mobile network operator relationships and industry leading customers provide us with a clear competitive edge in the fast growing mobile payments industry.”

The ability to pay for digital goods and services via a mobile phone bill or prepay credit is a key way for content owners and developers to fully monetize their products. This is especially the case in developing markets, such as Latin America, where penetration of bank accounts and credit cards is very low. Trials of direct to bill in Telefónica operating businesses have proven its ability to drive sales.

By integrating the single BlueVia billing API into the Bango Payments Platform app stores will benefit from Bango’s enhanced user experience for mobile devices, which generates higher payment conversion rates, especially from Wi-Fi-connected and other “off-network” devices. This is particularly important for the future of mobile payments as more than half of smartphones browsing app stores use Wi-Fi connections.

A key goal of the partnership is to accelerate the availability of a standardized and open payment platform for all app stores and content providers and to dramatically improve the customer experience. The platform will be available to all app stores, supporting operator-billing and other payment methods through a single, common platform. The advantage to the customer is a seamless payment flow with no requirement to enter personal information or leave the payment session.

As well as technology to improve the user experience, Bango is contributing to the partnership its market-leading expertise in managing payments at mass scale, developed over several years with industry-leading partners such as RIM, Facebook, Opera and others. The Bango platform expands the attractiveness of operator billing to third parties by automating all settlement processes, including tax reconciliation, local currency support and providing sophisticated analytics and reporting that enable app stores to optimize the mobile user experience.

Telefónica is rolling out direct to bill capabilities in its operating businesses and earlier this year announced global, framework agreements with Facebook, Google, Microsoft and RIM.

Bango CEO Ray Anderson commented that “Telefonica and Bango share a strategic vision: to widen access to paid content by standardizing and simplifying operator-billed mobile payments. BlueVia is a valuable and bold initiative by Telefonica to establish a unified set of billing APIs. We will standardize on BlueVia to connect with Telefónica’s 314 million subscribers around the world and look forward to welcoming other operators who join this initiative, as Telenor has done”.

Speaking for Telefónica Digital, Jose Valles, Head of BlueVia, said: “At the heart of every great service is first class customer experience and both Bango and BlueVia share the vision that mobile payments must be seamless and low friction for the customer.  Through this partnership, we are delivering a mobile billing ecosystem that empowers the app store and content owners to achieve mass scale in their business through global reach and a payment method far broader than credit cards”.

The partnership between Telefónica and Bango was negotiated by Telefónica’s Financial Services and Global Partnership teams, based in Madrid and Silicon Valley and headed by Joaquín Mata and Wayne Thorsen, respectively.

On 21 May 2012, Bango announced that various MNOs had approached Bango to use the Bango Payment Platform to connect their billing systems to the Google Play store. The Board believes it is too early to accurately forecast the level of business which will be generated through the partnership.

Bango expects to deliver further operator connections into Google Play in the coming year, as Android™ continues to forge ahead in the connected device market.

More than an application store, Google Play is all the stuff you love in one place, delivering music, books, movies and apps straight to hundreds of millions of users around the world. Operator billing is emerging as an ideal billing method for such a wide-range of digital categories. The proliferation of content rich devices running Android, coupled with the simplest online payment method available, is the basis for a truly transformative global business.

Bango is one of the world’s leading mobile payments and analytics companies. App stores, publishers and content providers use Bango to collect payment from mobile device users for online content and services. Bango’s pervasive presence across app stores and the mobile web creates a platform effect for its partners, leading to more identified mobile users and maximizing the number of single-click payments. The result is a one-click payment experience and significantly higher rates of collection. This is the experience that Telstra subscribers on Google Play will now enjoy.

Telstra’s Director of Consumer Applications and Services, Freddie Jansen Van Nieuwenhuizen, said the new service would make it easier for Australians to acquire the latest games and content for their mobile devices. “Aussies love their mobile apps. Telstra research shows that on average we download 36 apps each year and one in five of those are paid for. With more than 700,000 games, apps, books, movies and magazines now available on Google Play, including a wide selection of paid titles, many of our customers have told us they would like a simpler way to buy”.

Bango CEO Ray Anderson added: “Android is winning the battle for smartphone market share. As user numbers soar, we will see an increasing flow of developer talent and compelling content channelled through Google Play. We’re expecting that operator billing from Bango will boost conversion rates and developer monetization. It’s a new weapon in Google’s armoury”.

Bango has become the payments platform of choice for many of the world’s leading app stores. In addition to this first Google Play integration, Bango’s existing app store connections include Facebook, BlackBerry App World, Opera Mobile Store and others. Bango has also announced an agreement to provide payment services to Amazon and has become a technology partner for MasterCard’s PayPass mobile wallet.