Fortumo, Smart make mobile games payment convenient

MANILA, Philippines - Mobile payments company Fortumo has announced a direct carrier billing partnership with Smart Communications Inc. that will allow its subscribers to pay for games conveniently through their phone.

Fortumo provides billing for top global game developers such as Rovio, Electronic Arts and Gameloft. It will make its games portfolio also available for Smart’s game store, GameX (www.gamex.ph).

“The Philippines is a market that is well suited for this kind of operator billing payment. Through the deal with Fortumo, our subscribers will enjoy the ease of paying for many global games and apps through their phones,” said Orlando Vea, Smart chief wireless advisor.

“This will also benefit further the game developers’ community. Fortumo is also working together with Smart to educate local app and game developers about opportunities to open their apps for the overseas markets,” added Vea.

The Philippines has an extremely low penetration of credit cards, so only a small percentage of the population can make payments online.

There are 104 million mobile phones in use and only fewer than three million credit cards in circulation. This means enabling operator billing for digital content increases the potential number of users who can enjoy mobile game purchases 30 times.

While 39 percent of phones in use in the Philippines are smartphones, the majority of people still use feature phones. Fortumo has built a special payment flow for Web payments that supports payments on low-capability feature phones.

Fortumo’s direct carrier billing solution — in which a user does not need to send any text messages to complete the payment — is now available to more than 2.5 billion end-users globally.

For mobile developers, Fortumo offers a pioneering self-service setup with no monthly fees or minimum volume commitments, allowing any developer, regardless of size and location, to sign up for an account and get started with mobile payments at fortumo.com<http://fortumo.com/>.

Smart currently offers a wide portfolio of mobile games through its mobile portal and is also active in supporting the game developer community in the Philippines through its developer network program Smart DevNet.