Boku Partners With Outspark, NHN, And More For Mobile Payments
Mobile payments provider announced new partnerships with twelve game companies from the online and social game space, including Outspark and NHN. The new agreements enable Boku to offer mobile payments for virtual goods and currencies purchases to almost 200 million registers users across more than 250 games.
The San Francisco-based startup's new partners on the Facebook platform include 6Waves Ltd., Snap Interactive, and Zoosk Inc. In the free-to-play space, the company is now aligned with Cie Studios, Cyberstep Communications, Inc., GameDuell, IGG, Inc., King.com, NHN USA Inc. (ijji), NTREEV, Outspark, and PerfectWorld Entertainment Inc.
Those developers and publishers join the 1,000+ direct mobile payment partnerships Boku has signed since launching in June. Its existing clients include Playfish, Slide, TheBroth, Hive7, PageFad, and many others. The company notes that it has direct relationships with four of the top 15 application developers on Facebook, and that five of the top 15 Facebook games uses its mobile payments to sell virtual goods.
With this news, Boku also launched the third generation of its user interface (screenshots below), which it says is designed to increase the success rate of sign-ups and mobile transactions. The setup now recognizes mobile phone numbers versus landlines, and can dynamically determine which carrier a particular mobile number belongs to.
"BOKU is attracting new partners in a large part due to our ability to help them make more money from their existing businesses," says Boku co-founder and Marketing/Product SVP Ron Hirson. "As an example, Boku partner TheBroth saw mobile payments revenue double upon launching the new platform, while PageFad saw 5x growth in September alone due to rapid growth in applications coupled with Boku’s ability to help them optimize."
