• All Things D, Thursday, July 7, 2011 12:09 PM

EBay just got into the mobile payments game with the acquisition of Zong for about $240 million in cash. "Zong enables consumers to post payments to their mobile phone bills, mostly to pay for virtual goods inside of games," explains All Things D. "EBay said Zong will strengthen PayPal's payment platform, which in the past has focused on microtransactions [sic] and digital goods, but did not enable payments to be posted to the mobile phone bill."

Founded in 2008, Zong was spun off from Echovox, and had raised about $30 million from investors including Matrix Partners, Advent Venture Partners and Newbury Ventures. Zong now has access to 3.2 billion mobile users through about 250 carrier connections around the world.

As such, PayPal CFO Patrick Dupuis said it quickly became obvious that the two companies shared the same vision for the market. "We've been growing by leaps and bounds ourselves, so it was nice to find someone who shares so closely how we can transform commerce."

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