Boku Inc. has inked an agreement with two French wireless phone carriers to offer its carrier-billing service, a deal which will extend Boku’s reach to 32 million customers in France.
The San Francisco-based mobile-payments company is adding Bouygues Telecom and SFR, a subsidiary of Vivendi, to its list of carriers, which already includes Orange France.
Boku’s service enables consumers to pay for goods and services by billing purchases directly to their wireless phone bill. When checking out online, consumers enter their phone number as the Boku payment option, which 1,000 global merchants feature in their checkout processes.
Boku then sends a confirmation text message to the consumer and the consumer approves the transaction by replying to the message, Ron Hirson, Boku president, tells PaymentsSource.
France is already one the company’s top-ten markets and it expects that to grow with the new carrier deals, the company said in a press release.
Boku has been steadily making headway in diverse markets.
The company in July released a software-development kit that enables Google Inc. Android mobile-application makers to add what it calls “1-Tap” billing enabling consumers to charge in-game purchases to their monthly wireless bill (
Boku already provides its direct-to-mobile billing service to companies such as Aeria Games and Entertainment, Electronic Arts Inc. and Facebook.
Boku signed German carrier O2Germany in March (
In the U.S., Boku works with Verizon Wireless (
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