Bango said on Monday that its integration with Facebook to power mobile Web carrier billion is now live in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, with other countries to follow later this year.
Bango
first announced the partnership back in February, with the goal of streamlining mobile
payments for Facebook mobile users.“This enables Facebook's mobile web users to easily purchase digital content without the use of premium SMS messages or the limitations of credit cards,”
Bango said in announcing the service today.
Compared to traditional carrier billing, which may involve a number of steps including SMS confirmation, Bango says its payments are quicker and
result in a higher conversion rate—77% compared to 40% for direct carrier billing systems.
Bango late last year struck a payments-related agreement with Amazon and more recently has
become a technology partners for MasterCard’s PayPass mobile wallet. The U.K.-based company already handles app store and virtual goods payments for clients such as EA Mobile, Opera, BlackBerry
App World and Fox Mobile Group, as well as provide back-end analytics.
The step toward “frictionless” payment could help Facebook bolsters its mobile revenue stream, along with
other steps including the launch of its own app store and its recent move to start testing targeted ads for third-party apps and sites.
In
a recent interview, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said mobile drives more engagement per person on the desktop and will make more money per amount of time spent than on the PC.