Opera has announced a partnership with mobile payments specialist Neomobile today, which will bring its one-click operator billing platform to the company’s Opera Payment Exchange (OPX) service.
The deal has been struck through Opera Commerce, a fully-owned subsidiary of Opera Software, who launched the payments service on the Opera Mini browser at Mobile World Congress last year. Today’s announcement also follows the news that more than 208 million people used the Opera Mini app last month.
OPX acts “as a glue” between content providers, publishers and mobile billing systems, making payments secure and simple on the Opera Mini browser. Neomobile, on the other hand, is a mobile payments solution company but also a global mobile commerce group, offering mobile users content in partnership with carriers, digital content producers and services.
The partnership announced today, at least to begin with, affects only the company’s mobile commerce group arm. It means that users will be able to purchase games, music, video and other content in eleven different countries through one-click, direct carrier billing on the Opera Mini browser.
Founded in 2007, Neomobile is headquartered in Rome with additional offices in London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Reus, Sao Paulo, Beograd, Istanbul, Berlin, San Francisco, Ciudad De México and Mumbai.
Gianluca D’Agostino, CEO of Neomobile, says the next step will be to integrate the company’s mobile payment service, called Onebip, in the 70 countries where it has direct connections with mobile operators. “[This will] let merchants and other media companies make the most of all the ways to monetize their services through the Opera Mini browser,” he said.
Sameer Merchant, President of Opera Commerce added: “Opera strives to work with partners like Neomobile to strengthen the mobile-payment ecosystem for Opera Mini users through OPX. One by one, we want to partner with premium mobile-payment service providers like Neomobile to give the convenience of mobile payments to our Opera Mini users.”
Opera Mini is growing in popularity, so it makes sense for the company to focus on its own dedicated mobile payments solution. The firm revealed earlier this month that more than 208 million people were using the Opera Mini app to access the Internet in December 2012. Combined with Opera Mobile, the firm’s alternative app, that figures rises to 229 million. In total, it means that over 143 billion pages were produced over the four-week period, up 39 percent from the same month in 2011.
Image via Flickr / andyket
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