Boku Inc (LON:BOKU), a leading global provider of mobile payment and identity solutions, has announced that its subsidiary Fortumo, has been working with the leading Polish e-book vendor Legimi and together they are launching a direct carrier billing partnership.
Through Fortumo’s PayRead solution, users can now subscribe to Legimi and access thousands of e-books and audiobooks by charging the payments to their phone bill. The option to pay with carrier billing is available to more than 18 million subscribers of the mobile operators Orange and Plus.
Legimi collects carrier billing payments from users in Poland through Fortumo’s Unified SDK product. Through Unified SDK, one integration connects Legimi to telcos in Poland and gives access to a network of more than 300 other mobile operators and digital wallets. Fortumo hosts and localises Unified SDK checkout flows on its platform, making it simple and scalable for merchants to launch local payment methods across the world. Legimi additionally uses Fortumo’s Subscription Engine for full user lifecycle management of users acquired through carrier billing.
In Poland, credit card ownership is only 16% while 64% of people have a smartphone*. This creates a challenge for digital content merchants in the country: while most people are able to access digital content, the majority of people are unable to pay for premium services. Carrier billing solves this problem by letting any user charge purchases to their mobile phone bill. Additional data on the digital ecosystem of Poland and other countries in the Central & Eastern European (CEE) region can be found from Fortumo’s CEE market report accessible at: https://fortumo.com/blog/carrier-billing-market-report-central-eastern-europe/.
Mikołaj Małaczyński, CEO at Legimi, commented, “Instant access, convenient payment. This is a must for a fast growing and ambitious digital entertainment company. That is why we decided to work with Fortumo. The simplicity of implementation was also important, as it did not require significant involvement of the resources of our IT team.”
Andrea Boetti, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Fortumo, commented, “Carrier billing is the leading alternative payment method used by global app stores, game developers and streaming services. Fortumo’s PayRead gives digital publishers the simplest way to adopt the payment method when transitioning from an ad-based model to a reader revenue model. We are excited to be working with Legimi and helping support their user acquisition and revenue growth goals.”
*https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=1228#.
