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Bango, Telefónica partner to create direct-to-bill payment experience for mobile app stores

Another big contract for mobile payments and analytics company Bango. The company that already has Facebook, BlackBerry App World, Windows Phone Store and Amazon as customers announced it has signed a global framework agreement with Telefónica Digital.

The partnership aims to create “an enhanced direct-to-bill payment experience for mobile app stores,” by combining Bango’s frictionless payment experience with Telefónica’s BlueVia Payment APIs, connecting over 314 million chargeable customers worldwide to the Bango Payments Platform.

Bango and Telefónica Digital noted the partnership aims to accelerate the availability of a standardized and open payment platform for all app stores and content providers and to improve the customer experience.

Companies explained that the integration of the single BlueVia billing API into the Bango Payments Platform app stores is expected to benefit from Bango’s user experience for mobile devices, once more than half of smartphones browsing app stores use Wi-Fi connections.

Bango CEO Ray Anderson noted the companies want to widen access to paid content by standardizing and simplifying operator-billed mobile payments. He recognized BlueVia as a valuable and bold initiative by Telefonica to establish a unified set of billing APIs.

Bango will standardize on BlueVia to connect with Telefónica’s 314 million subscribers around the world.

Telefónica Digital’s head of BlueVia, Jose Valles, added that both Bango and BlueVia share the vision that mobile payments must be seamless and low friction for the customer.

In a statement, the companies highlighted the opportunity for digital goods and services via a mobile phone bill or prepay credit, especially in developing markets, such as Latin America, where the penetration of bank accounts and credit cards is very low.

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Roberta Prescott
Roberta Prescott
Editor, [email protected] Roberta Prescott is responsible for Latin America reporting news and analysis, interviewing key stakeholders. Roberta has worked as an IT and telecommunication journalist since March 2005, when she started as a reporter with InformationWeek Brasil magazine and its website IT Web. In July 2006, Prescott was promoted to be the editor-in-chief, and, beyond the magazine and website, was in charge for all ICT products, such as IT events and CIO awards. In mid-2010, she was promoted to the position of executive editor, with responsibility for all the editorial products and content of IT Mídia. Prescott has worked as a journalist since 1998 and has three journalism prizes. In 2009, she won, along with InformationWeek Brasil team, the press prize 11th Prêmio Imprensa Embratel. In 2008, she won the 7th Unisys Journalism Prize and in 2006 was the editor-in-chief when InformationWeek Brasil won the 20th media award Prêmio Veículos de Comunicação. She graduated in Journalism by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, has done specialization in journalism at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain, 2003) and Master in Journalism at IICS – Universidad de Navarra (Brazil, 2010) and MBA – Executive Education at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.