Boku Inc (LON:BOKU), a leading global mobile payment and mobile identity company, has announced that its recently acquired subsidiary, Fortumo, together with the video streaming service iQIYI International are today announcing the launch of a carrier billing partnership. Consumers can now subscribe to iQIYI International by charging the purchases to their mobile phone bill or prepaid SIM card. The first country where carrier billing has become available is Malaysia, with the Philippines to be launched next.
iQIYI International launched carrier billing through Fortumo’s Hosted Direct Carrier Billing product. Hosted DCB connects iQIYI International with the local mobile operator’s carrier billing platforms, while Fortumo manages the checkout flows and localisation. This allowed iQIYI International to launch carrier billing with minimal development effort, and carrier billing can be launched in additional countries without any technical changes required.
iQIYI International’s subscription-based business model is further supported by end-to-end user lifecycle management thanks to Fortumo’s Subscription Engine. The Subscription Engine takes care of subscription activations, renewals and terminations on behalf of iQIYI, while also supporting easy launches of marketing promotions (such as discounts and free trials), built-in grace periods and failed payment retry mechanisms.
In South-East Asia, less than 20% of people own a credit card while the majority of consumers have a smartphone. This makes it challenging for digital merchants to collect payments in the region: while most people have access to online content, most people are unable to pay for premium services. Carrier billing resolves this issue by allowing any mobile phone owner to charge online payments to their phone bill instead. Additional data on the mobile ecosystem of the region can be found from Fortumo’s Asia market report accessible at: https://fortumo.com/blog/carrier-billing-in-asia-market-report-by-fortumo/.
Andrea Boetti, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Fortumo commented, “Carrier billing is the simplest and widely available payment method for collecting payments on mobile devices, which makes it ideal for mobile-first digital content providers for user acquisition and conversion. iQIYI International is a leading company in the video streaming industry and we are excited to enable a simpler way to access high-quality content for their customers.”
