Mobile Payment Startup Boku Announces New Funding Round

Boku, a San Francisco-based startup that allows users to pay for things using their phone bill, announced a new funding round of $13.75 million. In total the company has raised $91 million since its launch in 2009.

The company has significant backing from Silicon Valley VC's and in the UK, including Khosla Ventures, Benchmark, NEA, Index Ventures and DAG Ventures.

Carrier billing demand has exploded recently, but mostly behind the scenes – Apple Inc AAPL, Alphabet Inc GOOG, and Microsoft Corporation MSFT all added carrier billing payment as a payment option in iTunes, Google Play, and Windows 10 respectively. Sony Corp SNE, Spotify, and Facebook Inc FB have also added carrier billing as preferred alternative payment options.  

This next round of funding will allow Boku to develop in emerging markets, where carrier billing is a popular payment method for consumers with little or no access to credit or debit cards. 

"Carrier billing is evolving from being a niche product for phone-centric content into a mainstream payment method used by the world's major brands for all types of digital products. The world's biggest tech companies see tremendous potential in the power of the phone as a source of funds," said Boku CEO Jon Prideaux.