Boku, Inc. is a

mobile payment Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cas ...

s company that allows businesses to collect

online payment An e-commerce payment system (or an electronic payment system) facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for offline transfer, also known as a subcomponent of electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become increa ...

s through both carrier billing and mobile wallets, and is headquartered in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, California. Boku utilizes

mobile network operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

(carrier) data for consumers online. Boku operates in over 90 countries globally, offering a bank-grade payment system. In 2020, Boku processed over one billion billable transactions and processed over $7 billion in payments volume.

History

Boku was founded in 2009 by Mark Britto, Erich Ringewald and Ron Hirson using the combined assets of Mobillcash Ltd. and Paymo, Inc. Boku raised a $13 million Series A investment from

Khosla Ventures Khosla Ventures is a private American venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by entrepreneur Vinod Khosla in 2004. The firm works with early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile technology, artifici ...

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with headquarters in both San Francisco and London. It invests primarily in tech companies. History Index Ventures has its origins in a Switzerland, Swiss bond (finance), bond-trading firm cal ...

and

Benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

. A year later, in 2010 Boku raised an additional US$25 million Series C investment, led by

DAG Ventures DAG Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. DAG Ventures works with startups in providing early stage and growth stage funding. Since its founding in 2004, by Tom Goodrich and John Cadeddu, the firm has backe ...

. In 2012, Boku raised another US$35 million, Series C investment led by NEA and existing venture capital investors. In 2016, Boku again raised an additional US$13.75 million led by a consortium of UK investors along with GMO Payment Gateway. In total, Boku has raised more than $91M in venture capital funding from

Benchmark Capital Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden. The firm is known for its equal partnership structure and focus on early-stage investing, typically leading the firs ...

, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, DAG Ventures,

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of t ...

Telefónica , S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company with registered office and headquarters located in two different places, both in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the ...

, and GMO Payment Gateway. On November 20, 2017, Boku listed its shares on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

(AIM) through an £125 million

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

Expansion

In 2012, Boku launched mobile wallet payments with

GCash GCash is a Philippine mobile payments service owned by Globe Fintech Innovations, Inc. (doing business as Mynt), and operated by its wholly-owned subsidiary, G-Xchange, Inc. Mynt is a joint venture between Ant Group, an affiliate company of th ...

in the Philippines. In 2013, Boku announced the acquisition of Indian-based Qubecell. In 2014, Boku launched mobile payments for the Sony PlayStation Store. The same year, they acquired German-based carrier billing provider Mopay. Boku acquired Mobileview, giving the company access to all four major mobile operators in Italy. In 2017, Boku exceeded $1B in annual payment volume for the first time. In 2018, Boku acquired Danal to add mobile authentication services that secure consumer accounts and transactions. In 2020, Boku acquired Fortumo, a carrier billing company, and recorded revenues of $54.6 million. Through its subsidiary, Boku Network Services IN Pvt. Ltd., Boku Inc. has obtained complete clearance from the

Reserve Bank of India Reserve Bank of India, abbreviated as RBI, is the central bank of the Republic of India, and regulatory body responsible for regulation of the Indian banking system and Indian rupee, Indian currency. Owned by the Ministry of Finance (India), Min ...

(RBI) to operate as a Payment Aggregator in India. This progress comes after the first in-principle permission that was given on 31 January 2023.

Partnerships

Boku's payments customers include

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

DAZN DAZN (; pronounced "da zone") is a British Over-the-top media service, over-the-top sports Sports broadcasting, streaming and entertainment platform. Founded in 2007 as Perform Group via the merger of Premium TV Limited and Inform Group, it is o ...

and

Riot Games Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop ''League of Legends'' and went on to develop ...

amongst others. Payments partners include mobile operators

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the ...

Jio Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (d/b/a Jio) is an Indian telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai. It operates a national LTE (telecommunication), LTE network with coverage across all 22 telecom ...

Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. It was formed in 199 ...

, Saudi Telecom (STC),

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd., abbreviated as SKT ( or ) is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 perce ...

, Zong and mobile wallet providers

LINE Pay Line is a freeware app and service for instant messaging and social networking, operated by the Korean-Japanese company LY Corporation, co-owned by SoftBank Group and Naver. Line was launched in Japan in June 2011 by NHN Japan, a subsidiary of N ...

KakaoPay Kakao Pay () is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by Kakao based in South Korea that allows users make mobile payments and online transactions. The service supports contactless payments using near-field communications and QR codes. K ...

, RabbitLinePay,

GoPay PT Gojek Indonesia (stylized in all lower case and stylized ''j'' as goȷek, formerly styled as GO-JEK) is an Indonesian on-demand multi-service platform and digital payment technology group based in Jakarta. Gojek was first established in Ind ...

, OVO, Dana, GrabPay.

Products and services

Boku provides businesses with the ability to accept mobile payments (direct carrier billing and mobile wallets) online from consumers. Boku also offers a subscription bundling product, named Trident, that enables subscription services to be offered to consumers through a mobile network operator. Additionally, Boku offers mobile identity products that utilize mobile network operator data in order for consumers to verify their identity in order to complete transactions online.

Recognition and awards

In 2011, Mobile Trax awarded Boku their Mobility Award. In 2011 and 2013, Forbes selected Boku for their 25 most promising companies in America list. In 2014, Boku won the "Best Alternative Payments" award at 2014 Payment Awards. In 2020, Boku won the "Future Digital Awards" for Best Mobile Money Offering and Fraud Detection and Prevention Innovation.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boku, Inc. Mobile payments Companies based in San Francisco Companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market Information technology companies of the United States Financial technology companies 2017 initial public offerings