Following the launch of carrier billing in the US, Germany and Switzerland, the companies have expanded their agreement to bring direct carrier billing to Windows Store customers in the UK and Italy, through respective partnerships with O2 and Wind.
“Microsoft is a superb partner for Boku, and our relationship has been made even stronger with the addition of UK and Italy,” said Jon Prideaux, CEO of Boku, which has more than 260 carrier connections, reaching 4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide.
Microsoft 10 customers on O2 or Wind subscriptions can use their mobile account as a payment option when making purchases in the Windows Store. Recent Kanter statistics indicate that O2 owns 33% of all cellular plan subscribers in the UK and Wind owns 33.5% of all cellular plan subscribers in Italy.
Prideaux addd: “In a matter of months, our agreement with Microsoft has expanded from one major developed market to five, and covers all Windows 10 devices; from phones and tablets, to desktop computers. This rapid expansion, with much more to come, is proof positive that carrier billing is becoming the world’s preferred alternative payment, regardless of consumer access to credit or bank cards.”
According to Ovum, OS app stores are predicted to be the largest revenue-generating segment for carrier billing by 2017. Windows 10 is seeing steady growth globally, having already been installed on more than 350 million devices.
Carrier billing has experienced a surge over the past year with Microsoft's launch of carrier billing coming shortly after Apple's adoption of carrier billing for iTunes, which were recently launched in Germany and Russia.
Further market rollouts with new carriers and Boku, which is widely reported to be powering carrier billing on iTunes, are expected over the coming months.