Mobile payments firm Obopay, backed by Qualcomm, Redpoint Ventures, and others, has bought out a small, two-person Seattle-based company called BillMonk.
BillMonk was founded by former Amazon.com employees Gaurav Oberi and Charles Groom. The service helps people track what they owe using mobile devices, while Obopay actually handles the mobile payment transaction. BillMonk will help roommates, travelers and co-workers split bills, what it calls “social money” services.
More details in the release here.
Related:
-- Obopay Receives Additional Funding
-- Mobile Payment Firm Obopay Gets $7 Million Funding; Adds Three VPs
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Obopay buys BillMonk - MoCoNews
Friday, January 26, 2007
BillingWorld - MoCoNews
Over at BillingWorld there’s a fairly comprehensive piece about the problems and vulnerabilities in mobile billing systems, seen from both the carrier and the content providers point of view.
“For now, the service providers' content strategy remains in an early phase, where the focus is on infrastructure and throw-it-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks tactics. But content has been a multibillion-dollar business for several years, thanks largely to ring tones. Now service providers are busy introducing new partners and new types of content. While things like fraud prevention and revenue leakage are in the discussion, effort is not yet being spent on putting the controls in place that a mature content business will need.”
Obviously some companies are focusing on this, but the industry as a whole might need to look a bit closer. If you’re involved in the actual process of selling or buying content between carriers and providers, this article is worth a read.
The same site has a Q&A with Charmaine Oak, senior product managerenablers and billing for Orange UK, and Graham Carey, marketing director--EMEA for Portal Software, about the carriers mobile content experience.
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