Boku mobile payments
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| Public | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Payment service provider |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Founder | Mark Britto, Ron Hirson, Erich Ringewald |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
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Areas served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Jon Prideaux (CEO), Adam Lee (CRO), Stuart Neil (CFO), Mike Cahill (COO) |
| Website | boku.com |
Boku Inc. : provides a mobile payments platform headquartered in San Francisco, CA, enabling consumers to pay for goods and services using their mobile phone number, with purchases billed to a consumer's mobile network operator bill. This form of mobile payment, also referred to as carrier billing, allows unbanked consumers who may have a mobile phone, but no credit card or traditional bank account, to make purchases online, as well as banked customers who simply find carrier billing a simpler way to transact. The majority of transactions processed through Boku carrier billing are for digital and virtual goods and services, including music streaming, online video, digital subscription services, mobile device app stores, social and free-to-play games, virtual goods, social networks and other online experiences. Boku focuses on making the mobile phone number a viable payment option not only for virtual goods, but for digital goods (i.e. MP3's, eBooks, movies, etc.) and physical goods.
Originally called Vidicom Ltd, and founded in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, U.K. in 2003 by Glyn Smith and Thomas Kirk, Vidicom Ltd sought funding from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley for its application "Mobillcash". Vidicom Ltd incorporated Boku inc as a Delaware company in 2009 and reestablished itself as Boku. Boku launched in the USA in 2009 with the acquisition of both Mobilcash and Paymo – a provider in the mobile payments industry – as well as $13 million USD in investment from venture capital firms.
A year later, Boku added $25 million USD in a series C round, led by DAG Ventures.
In 2012, Boku raised another $35 million USD round to be used to continue building out its payments business globally, led by NEA and existing venture capital investors.
The last round, $13.75 million USD was completed in 2016 and led by a consortium of UK investors and GMO Payment Gateway to fund carrier connections for global expansion. In total, Boku has raised more than $91M in venture capital funding from Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, DAG Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, Telefónica, and GMO Payment Gateway.
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