Bango, mobile payment provider for some of the world’s biggest technology companies, today announced it has secured £6.5 million ($10.2 million) in funding, which it says will be used to finance business development, but most importantly — it’s growth into emerging markets.
The company already counts Facebook, Google, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Amazon as customers, but says current and new investors have committed to its latest funding round to a point where it was oversubscribed, highlighting the company’s future potential as one of the leading mobile payment specialists.
Bango says that the funding will “underwrite emerging market opportunities,” enable it to have “greater capacity to fund further business development with a view to gaining more mobile network operator partners” and notes that it will also strengthen its balance sheet.
Specific areas of interest include Brazil, Latin America, India and other parts of Asia.
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The company helps facilitate carrier billing payments, which deduct purchases from a customer’s mobile tariff. This reduces payment friction, meaning customers opt not to use credit cards and often results increase in mobile purchases due to its simplicity.
According to Bango, its latest round will be completed by February 25.
Commenting on the company’s investment, Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango, said: “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.”
At the end of 2012, Bango said that its services were available to over one billion mobile users worldwide. It took the company 12 months to add 500 million consumers, noting that its largest markets were Europe, with around 327 million users; North America, with 320 million users; and Asia, with 98 million mobile users.
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