Kaushik Sthankiya – Senior Vice President Business Development
The Bango Platform powers mobile commerce for global partners including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. To support growth – particularly across Asia, Africa and the Americas – Kaushik Sthankiya joins Bango in October as Senior Vice President Business Development. Kaushik will lead the global team that works with partners as they expand payments coverage and increase marketing and acquisition activities worldwide, moving from a similar role at Docomo Digital. “The opportunity to combine my payment industry experience gained at Mastercard, Visa and Docomo Digital with the unique Bango technology that increases marketing success for merchants is compelling. I look forward to working with the team at Bango to really accelerate growth and profitability in the coming years.” said Kaushik.

Akitsugu Matsushima – Director Business Development APAC
Google Play developers are using the Bango Platform to increase sales and customer acquisition by activating the valuable data from mobile operators that partner with Bango. Akitsugu Matsushima joins the Bango team in Tokyo from a role managing app developer recruitment for the Huawei app store. Akitsugu has a global role, with a special focus on the Top 100 app developers in China, Korea and Japan who are seeking to expand their business globally.

David Shiyanbade – Head of Onboarding
Standard integration with the Bango Platform is generally a self-service process. With the increasing opportunities for data monetization, resale business models and alternative payment methods including digital wallets, Bango is now providing additional support to the largest merchants and mobile operators to enable them to integrate, join the Bango ecosystem and thrive more quickly. David Shiyanbade has been appointed into a new role as Head of Onboarding. He is focused on helping the largest partners move quickly onto the Bango Platform to meet their ambitious growth objectives using unique Bango technology, data and partnerships.

Guy Singh – VP Product Marketing
To accelerate adoption of Bango technology and partnerships in the market through standardized products, Guy Singh has joined Bango to lead product marketing. Joining Bango after product roles in Amazon and Vodafone Singh commented: “I am excited to join Bango as it expands its range of successful and fast growing mobile commerce products. I’m looking forward to driving more business for its global partners with the unique and valuable data Bango provides. I relish the opportunity to expand the footprint of Bango through strong product offerings”

Delivering Pandora subscriptions to customers in the USA

Bango has partnered with Pandora (NYSE: P), the largest music streaming service in the U.S., to power subscriptions through Pandora reseller partners. This service is initially available on a U.S.-based wireless network provider, enabling Pandora to grow the subscriber base for their leading music service.

Eligible customers can select a bundled subscription to Pandora Premium to add to their plan. AT&T customers are the first to receive this offer. With Pandora Premium, users can search and play any song or album, with unlimited skips / replays, no ads, higher quality audio, offline listening, the ability to create playlists, and access to Pandora’s newly launched Personalized Soundtracks.

The past few years have seen a huge change in how people get their entertainment, with a dramatic shift toward online streaming services to access the latest entertainment. The paid subscription model has supported the growth in these services. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the majority of the 16.5% rise in music revenue in the U.S. in 2017 is due to music streaming services.

“Driving subscriber growth is a key focus area for us this year,” said Dave Geary, VP of Business Development, Pandora.“We’re excited to partner with Bango to enable listeners’ seamless sign-up to Pandora’s subscription music services through Bango’s network of telco and other billing partners.”

“Bango is excited that Pandora has chosen to use the Bango Platform to broaden their reach through partnership with resellers,” commented Bango CEO Ray Anderson.“We look forward to building on this initial launch to enable Pandora to grow new subscribers in the era of streaming services.”

Using Bango’s billing integration technology, qualifying customers have the opportunity to subscribe to Prime Video as part of the customer’s mobile plan.

This follows Bango’s initial launch with Amazon in India for Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile network operator. Bango technology ensures that entitled mobile customers receive uninterrupted access to Amazon Prime Video from the moment they become active, for as long as they continue to subscribe and pay their mobile bills.

“Bango technology enables our customers to thrive by acquiring new users”, commented Ray Anderson, CEO, Bango. “Global merchants can offer their customers market leading products such as video and music services, home security, e-sports services and many more.”

Millions of Entel subscribers in Chile are now able to pay using their phone bill for the massive array of content and services sold in Google Play, including Minecraft, Tinder and Google Play Music. Pre and post-paid subscribers can simply click-to-buy using carrier billing, placing the charge on their Entel phone bill, for instant access to their favorite games, music, movies and more.

Commenting on the launch, the Market People Manager at Entel Chile, Matías del Campo, noted that, “At Entel we are proud of ourselves for offering the best services and products to our customers. Launching carrier billing in Google Play through the Bango Platform enhances our offering, providing a safe, easy to use payment method so our customers can enjoy the very best content on offer in the world’s biggest app store. These are the initiatives that allow us to bring people closer to the infinite possibilities that technology offers and in this way, responsibly transform the society”.

Latin America is the world’s second-fastest growing mobile region after Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet financial inclusion in the digital ecosystem is significantly low, with over 70 percent of Latin Americans being unbanked, (Americas Market Intelligence, 2016). Carrier billing enables anyone with a mobile phone bill to fully engage in the online ecosystem. In developing markets, app stores using carrier billing experience up to 1000 percent higher payment conversion rates compared to credit card.

With over 1 billion monthly active users and 94 billion app installs in 2017, Google Play is the leading global app store pre-installed on all Android devices. Combining the reach of Google Play, with the enhanced billing performance delivered by the Bango Platform, will deliver Entel Chile’s subscribers with the best payment experience available in this mobile hungry country.

To ensure continued carrier billing sales growth Entel, the largest operator in Chile, can use Bango comparative intelligence technology to evaluate their performance and boost both users and payment conversions. Operators relying on Bango data typically benefit from revenue uplifts between 20-40 percent, with some boosting revenue by more than 70 percent.

“Driven by increasing smartphone adoption and internet access people are spending more time and money on their phones, driving unprecedented growth in digital commerce. Increasing financial inclusion across the globe is a core focus for Bango,” commented Bango CEO, Ray Anderson. “This is the first Direct Carrier Billing launch for Google Play within South America. It follows the first Direct Carrier Billing launch for Google Play across Latin America with AT&T Mexico in 2015, also through the Bango Platform”.

Bango products actively grow our customers’ business. The Bango Platform uses unique technology and data to constantly improve how customers pay for content and services. It optimizes payment flows, boosts conversion rates, ensures compliance with market regulations, and identifies “pay capable users”.

Bango Boost analyzes and benchmarks payment performance to deliver actions proven to grow sales success. It is a key reason why mobile operators select the Bango Platform to drive their Direct Carrier Billing, bundling and resale business, and why mobile operators move from traditional direct integrations over to the Bango Platform.

The Bango acquisition of Audiens further extends the opportunities for developers, merchants, stores and operators to grow revenues. Audiens provides the standard channel for commerce focused insights to be offered to ad networks and marketing technology providers. Bango partners can monetize additional data points through this Audiens channel when they are ready.

Together, Bango and Audiens lead the way in providing joined-up payment and marketing optimization. Bango Deep is focused on revenue growth through improved customer acquisition, engagement and payment performance. By combining knowledge, data and platform technology, Bango Deep delivers commerce insights to developers, merchants, stores and operators, as well as the marketing and advertising networks that generate growth.