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More bucks for your Bango as user spend rises




Rachel Elias-Jones, Chief Financial Officer for Bango. Pic - Richard Marsham
Rachel Elias-Jones, Chief Financial Officer for Bango. Pic - Richard Marsham

The Cambridge company which pioneered mobile web payments has announced a big increase in end user spend last year.

And Bango expects that growth to continue over the next 12 months.

The company’s payment platform enables smartphone users to click and buy apps or in-app content, adding the charge directly to their mobile phone bill. Its app store partners include such corporate giants as Amazon, Google, BlackBerry, Samsung and Microsoft.

End user spend through its payment platform almost trebled from £67million at the end of 2015 to £195million at the end of 2016 – a growth of 191 per cent year-on-year.

Operating costs of £5million were roughly in line with expectations, with much of that involved in the purchase and transition of Billtomobile.

Bango chief financial officer Rachel Elias-Jones told the Cambridge Independent: “The number of transactions going through the platform and the capacity that the platform has shows the strategy is working.

“Sometimes these things take time to develop, but we’re starting to see them pay off now, which is really positive.”

Bango was co-founded in 1999 by current chief executive Ray Anderson and Anil Malhotra. Six years later it was listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The rise of the smartphone has undoubtedly helped the company to reach its record levels. The Bango platform helps users to unlock the world of apps, video, music, games and other content.

Bango continues to acquire major customers for its mobile payments technology while expanding its reach.

In 2015 it launched direct carrier billing into more than 140 mobile operator markets and it holds more than 200 million billable mobile identities.

Ms Elias-Jones added that Bango was a leading business in the sector.

“What we focus on is highly scalable platforms that can handle far greater volumes,” she said. “A lot of the growth we’ve had this year is from connections we did two years ago and then each year they grow and grow.

“Our own technology has helped to grow the revenues faster than they would have grown naturally.

“Basically, having a highly scalable technology platform adding more connections each year and watching them grow is where we are getting to with the end user spend. We expect to see the end user spend grow again in 2017 because we have got new connections coming online.

“More people have smartphones and they use them to buy all kinds of content, from games, news, music, subscriptions and more. That’s why we are really positive about future growth.”



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