Boku, Inc. is a

mobile payment A 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, as the cardinal class of ...

s company that allows businesses to collect online payments through both carrier billing and mobile wallets, and is headquartered in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, California. Boku utilizes mobile network operator (carrier) data to enhance the security and user experience for consumers online. Boku offers its customers more than 330+ mobile payment types 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 and Paymo. Boku raised a $13 million Series A investment from Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures and Benchmark. 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 backed ...

. 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 based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups. History The firm's most successful investment was a 1997 investment of $6.7 million in eBay for 22.1% of the company. In 2011, it invested $12 mil ...

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/ AI, and security. Since its ...

Khosla Ventures Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successf ...

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...

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 ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...

Telefónica Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...

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

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...

(AIM) through £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 investme ...

Expansion

In 2012, Boku launched mobile wallet payments with GCash in the Philippines. In 2013, Boku announced the acquisition of Qubecell, India's largest aggregator in carrier billing to grow India as its engineering and technology hub. In 2014, Boku launched mobile payments for the Sony PlayStation Store, and 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, the second largest carrier billing company and recorded revenues of $54.6 million. More from Boku : https://www.boku.com/resources/news/

Partnerships

Boku's payments customers include

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

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

DAZN DAZN ( "da zone") is a global sports entertainment platform. Different to traditional linear and satellite broadcasting, DAZN is an over-the-top (OTT) streaming service meaning that it is delivered directly to viewers via the internet. The ...

and Riot Games amongst others. Payments partners include mobile operators

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...

Jio Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, doing business as Jio, is an Indian telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, headquartered in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It operates a national LTE network with coverage across all 2 ...

, Deutsche Telekom,

, Saudi Telecom (STC),

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd. ( 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 percent share as of 2008. ...

, and mobile wallet providers LINE Pay,

KakaoPay KakaoPay (Hangul: 카카오페이) 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 communicat ...

, RabbitLinePay, GCash,

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. Consumers may receive the service for free during a trial period until they are billed by the mobile 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.

External links

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boku Mobile Payments 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