Payment Company Bango Raises £11m Following Apple Carrier Billing News

Payment company Bango has just announced its latest funding round, after the company was mistakenly identified as Apple’s carrier billing partner.

Last week, the mobile payments company revealed it had secured £11m in funding, which is currently subject to shareholder approval.

The company said this latest round of funding would be enough to “fund Bango through to profitability”.

The new funds will also be used to help the company expand into new markets, and help make sure it is well positioned to meet the “anticipated high growth of the leading app stores”.

Speaking about the latest investment, Bango CEO Ray Anderson said: “I am delighted that Bango has the support of top-tier investors to pursue further growth with our leading app store partners.

“Bango has worked hard over the years to remove barriers to growth – replacing upfront activation fees with a monthly recurring platform fee, and building a platform to smoothly process at least 15 times current spending levels.

“The mobile industry is now seeing the benefits of Direct Carrier Billing, and greater demand for this method of payment comes at a time when Bango is the market leader. The funding package announced today will see great returns as we deliver further End User Spend in markets around the world.”

Earlier this month, Bango was named as the company Apple was most likely using for its carrier billing option in Germany, because of their previous work with Telefonica on Android carrier billing.

However, the company missed out on the deal, with sources telling GDI that Apple was in fact using mobile payments firm Boku, reports that were later confirmed.

Despite this, Bango’s shares rose by 50% following the erroneous reports.

Speaking about the introduction of carrier billing onto the App Store, Bango said: “Other app stores, including Google, Amazon, BlackBerry and Microsoft, have found carrier billing to be a successful payment method and  have gradually expanded its availability. We expect  that Apple will see success by increasing its paying customer base through carrier billing and follow a similar path.”

In recent years, Bango has seen steady growth, with over 140 direct activations between mobile network operators and the world’s leading app stores.

It has also seen its end user spend increase by 97%, compared to 2014.

Visit Bango’s site here.