Today the mobile payment provider Boku announced twelve new service partners. Boku's new partners are Zoosk, 6waves, Snap Interactive, Cie Studios, GameDuell, Cyberstep Communications, IGG, King.com, NHN USA, Ntreev, Outspark, and Perfect World. Now all of these publishers will allow users to purchase virtual items in games and apps with their mobile and landline phone numbers through the Boku service.
"We really focus on virtual goods and strategies," said Ron Hirson, Boku VP of Product and Marketing. "Gaming is a natural fit because carriers generally take a very big piuece of the transaction and virtual items generally don't have a marginal cost. It would be prohibitive for merchants to offer real goods through mobile right now, but if I'm buying a $10 sword in a game, that good has no marginal cost."
The new partners add 200 million registered users to the base of customers currently served by Boku in social games, online games, and other applications. This gives Boku a total reach of 500 million registered users across all partner platforms. Some of the deals have been negotiated for as long as nine months, predating Boku's official launch. Along with the new partners, Boku is rolling out a suite of improvements to its services designed to make payment easier.
One of the major improvements is a technology that will instantly recognize which carrier a phone number is associated with and whether a number entered is a mobile number or a landline number. Hirson hopes these features will help Boku attract new users more quickly.
"If you go to Gen Y, cordless phones in the home are standard. Gen X had corded phones. As you get into the younger generations, they have a hard time telling the difference between a cordless and mobile phone," said Hirson.
Now that Boku's software can recognize what type of number a user is entering, the company can cut down on the number of steps required to sign up for mobile pay. Previously users had to identify all of this manually, with confusion about the difference between cordless and mobile causing some younger users to be unable to complete the process.
Another feature Boku is rolling out to drive monetization is a localization into 20 new languages. Boku is currently available in 56 countries and Hirson says that having a localized interface makes a big difference in conversion. He points to Taiwan as an example of a territory that is now converting very well through Boku now that the interface is available in Chinese.
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