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Microsoft Turns On Its First Carrier-Billing Deal For The Windows Phone Store With Bango, In Indonesia
Microsoft, unveiling a raft of product annoucements at its Build conference this week, is also making some advances further afield. Today, Bango, the UK-based mobile payments and analytics company that works with companies like Facebook, Amazon, Blackberry and Google so that app purchases can be billed directly to users’ phone bills, is announcing the first implementation of its service with Microsoft, on the Windows Phone Store. Specifically, Microsoft is turning it on in Indonesia, the largest mobile phone market in South East Asia with over 50 million users. The plan is to expand it to further markets in the near future.
Bango and Microsoft have had a framework agreement in place for a while now but this is actually the first commercial deployment based on that. “Today’s launch with Windows Phone Store is strategically important as it marks our first integration with Microsoft,” Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango, noted in a statement.
It’s also telling that the first deal has been made in Indonesia. Not only does the country boast the most mobile users in the region, but it’s an example of how mobile companies are targeting emerging markets for new services.
As smartphone adoption slows down in more mature markets, it’s markets where there is still fast growth, and more chance of winning over new users, that are the focus. It’s one reason why Apple has finally turned on its online store in Russia. India’s place as a fast-rising number-three in terms of mobile users, after China and the U.S., also underscores this trend. For Microsoft, which is a distant third to Android and Apple for adoption of its smartphone platform, going to markets where there are still consumers to be won over is a smart strategy, and one that its close partner Nokia is also pursuing.
Bango, for its part, has been focusing a lot of its efforts on targeting carrier billing deals in emerging markets — other examples of its efforts in this area include a deal to power payments for Firefox Mobile’s app store (also targeting emerging markets); a deal with Telefonica (covering Latin America); and a $10.2 million fundraise specifically to fund emerging market expansion.
This is not just because of the aforementioned still-fast growth of smartphone user numbers, but because many of these markets also have low penetration for credit, debit and other payment cards. As a result, having a facility to bill app purchases directly to your prepaid mobile phone account is not only more convenient, but might actually be opted for more frequently than in markets where users already have accounts with iTunes, Amazon and the rest based on their credit card accounts.
Bango says that app stores that have carrier billing services implemented tend to have much higher conversion rates for paid services. In markets where there are credit cards in abundance, conversion rates are 300-400% higher for carrier billing services than for other services; in markets where card penetration is low, it claims that carrier billing conversions are 1,000% higher.
The Indonesia deal involved a third party as well, the carrier Indosat — meaning that it’s only applying to users on that network. The thinking for Indosat goes that this will either drive more users to that network, and get users to spend more money; and for Microsoft and Bango that one deal will get Indosat’s competitors also willing to negotiate.
“Mobile operator billing gives consumers a convenient payment option with significantly higher conversion rates than credit cards, greatly benefiting Windows Phone 8 customers and developers,” says Todd Brix, GM, Windows Phone Store, Microsoft, in a statement. “We’re happy to see companies like Bango and Indosat working together to expand monetization opportunities for developers and provide seamless purchasing experiences for Windows Phone users.”
Given that this is carrier billing that we are talking about, getting a carrier on-side for these services to link in with their back-ends is central to moving ahead with these services. Bango refuses to comment on where it currently stands with Amazon — a partner that it announced ages ago <a target="_blank" href="“>but has yet to roll out carrier billing in any market. But the answer may lie in how those carrier deals are shaping up — or not, as the case may be.
Photo: Flickr
Aiming At Small Business And Headed By Ex-Yahoo Head, NumberFour De-Cloaks In Berlin With A $38M Series A, Europe's Biggest To Date
NumberFour, founded in 2009 by former senior Yahoo executive Marco Boerries in Berlin to re-engineer small business processes, has secured an enormous $38 million in Series A financing led by Index Ventures, specifically Mike Volpi. Volpi Participating in the round is Allen&Co, T-Venture/Deutsche Telekom, Andreas von Bechtolsheim, former Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Klaus Hommels and Lars Hinrichs among others. Unusually, the company has remained almost completely quiet since its foundation. It will obviously compete against a number of players, not least Salesforce among them.
In addition, its business platform and apps are not yet publicly available. The company said “an announcement will follow at an appropriate time.” Also participating in the round was German entrepreneur Andy Bechtolsheim who co-founded Sun Microsystems and Simon Levene, a former partner of Accel Partners, and executive at Excite@Home and Yahoo!.
NumberFour has a platform that provides productivity, communication, sales, production, procurement, delivery, reservation and financial tools for offline and online businesses. Boerries’ vision is that in the future, most small businesses should have the efficiencies and scale effects that large enterprises enjoy.
Founded in 2009 by Boerries, the startup is producing apps on smartphones, tablets and PCs. It has offices in Berlin, Hamburg, Germany and Palo Alto, California.
In statements, Boerries said: “I deeply care about enabling small businesses to become more competitive and successful. Having started four businesses myself, I know how hard and rewarding it can be at the same time. Small is beautiful!”
Mike Volpi, Partner, Index Ventures said: “From a technology perspective, small businesses are the most underserved market in the world. NumberFour is the first comprehensive business platform that offers amazing technology, wrapped in apps with a stunningly simple user interface.”
Klaus Hommels an investor in NumberFour said: “NumberFour combines huge market potential, scale effects and passion – paired with the powerful and meticulous leadership of one of the best and most experienced entrepreneurs. It is a truly special opportunity.” Klaus Hommels is one of Europe’s leading business angels and has invested in Skype, Facebook, Xing and Spotify, among others.
Lars Hinrichs, Founder of XING and investor stated, “NumberFour has the potential to become the leader for small business software, a multi-billion opportunity. Marco is a successful serial entrepreneur and has proven multiple times that he can make big ideas work.” Hinrichs founded LinkedIn competitor Xing and is now best known for founding the startup accelerator HackFwd.
The full press release is here.
EFF Sues FBI, Wants Access To Records Of The FBI's Facial Recognition Program
Companies like Facebook have been scrutinized by government regulators over the use of facial recognition technology. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation is putting a mirror up to the government to demand the same scrutiny back. The organization is suing the Federal Bureau of Investigation over access to its facial recongition records, based on three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that the EFF originally made a year ago. We’re embedding the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, below.
To be clear, the EFF is not asking for actual facial recognition records — although that may be to come. For now, the complaint is restricted to demanding records relating to the FBI’s plans for its facial recognition program, which is still being put in place and expected to launch in 2014.
The EFF is asking records of agreements and discussions between the FBI and state agencies; records related to the FBI’s assessment of the reliability of face-recognition technology; and records of the FBI’s plans to merge civilian and criminal records in a single repository. The EFF says it also wants to know how many records containing facial-recognition data the FBI may already have. For those who believe that programs like this should be made more public, the EFF’s requests are essential building blocks for those subsequent demands of the records themselves.
As background to the FBI’s bigger plan: The FBI has been putting together a facial recognition plan for at least a couple of years, as part of a larger biometrics database that it plans to share with other agencies across the local, state, federal and international levels. The EFF has been trying to get it to disclose information about how it will work since 2011. Other parts of the Next Generation Identification database, as it is called, include iris scans, palm prints, face-recognition-ready photos, and voice data.
“NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes,” writes EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch. “Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy. Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote, and mass capture of their images.” The EFF believes that the FBI is working under an out-of-date set of privacy guidelines, last written in 2008 before biometrics capabilities were as advanced as they are today.
The EFF is no stranger to suing the FBI over information access — and no stranger to getting its way, either. It’s also taken the FBI to court over domestic surveillance data and abuse of National Security Letter data collection rules for private citizens’ data (it won this one, with some help from the ACLU). It’s also recently revealed data about the FBI’s drone program.
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