ITV extends mobile interactive services partnership with Fonix

Fonix are delighted to announce that ITV has agreed to gradually extend its commercial partnership with Fonix to include SMS billing payments, alongside the existing relationship for carrier billing and charity services.

Fonix will continue to support all mobile carrier billing across the ITV competition portal and gradually extend to supporting all competition interactivity for its on-air formats including high-profile shows such as Dancing on Ice, I’m A Celebrity, Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, ITV Sport, Love Island and This Morning.

We’re thrilled that all of the hard work at Fonix has enabled us to deliver a growing and closer relationship with ITV into the future. Mobile interactivity and payments have always represented a great opportunity to extend the viewing experience for broadcasters from an engagement and monetisation perspective and we’re delighted to be supporting ITV with their strategy in this space.

At Fonix, we’ve always taken great pride in the quality services and support that we’re able to deliver for major brands and broadcasters like ITV, so it’s fantastic to have that recognised with this partnership!

Take a Journey with Mobile Billing – EE BT event, supported by aimm

On the 23rd March EE/BT, supported by aimm, hosted the  ‘Take a Journey with Mobile Billing’ event at the BT Tower.

The aim of the event was to provide an introduction to Charge to Bill, as an additional payment method for the transport and parking sector.  The event demonstrated how – by giving a wider choice of payment options to their customers – the transport sector could reach those that may not wish to or are able to buy transport tickets the traditional ways.

Naomi Hone, Charge to Bill Manager at EE/BT said: ‘there are 72 million mobile phones in the UK, and carrier billing is already automatically enabled on most of them. This essentially means that the majority of people are walking around with a ticketing vending machine in their pocket!’

With speakers from aimm, EE, Kaleyra and Plusdial, as well as a panel featuring Fonix and DMB, answering questions  from the audience, it was a great opportunity to start the conversation around the opportunities that mobile billing can provide the transport industry.

SLA Digital Bring Mobile Esports Platform Gizer More Gamers with Carrier Billing

Global mobile esports platform Gizer, a gamified network designed for today’s global gaming community, has partnered with SLA Digital to expand their community and offer their customers a new payment channel through carrier billing.

Gizer is a leading mobile platform that connects gamers to the world’s most popular competitive mobile titles including Clash Royale, Brawl Stars, Critical Ops, Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG Battlegrounds, and Fortnite Battle Royale. Gamers can sign up to play and compete for earnings, network with others, host tournaments, create and join teams, and much more.

Gizer has taken its first step in the Middle East with carrier billing in Kuwait, and customers of Zain Kuwait can now subscribe to the service via carrier billing and play mobile esports for real rewards in some of the world’s most popular competitive mobile titles.

Kevin Drayne, CEO at SLA Digital commented: “We are pleased to announce our partnership with a leading esports platform and excited to drive new revenues for Gizer through the power of carrier billing. Carrier billing offers unrivalled convenience when it comes to mobile payments and has the ability to unlock countless new users. Zain Kuwait is just the start and we hope to bring Gizer even more paying customers by connecting them with more mobile operators and more regions in the future.”

Jack Lamir, CEO at Gizer said: “Our partnership with SLA Digital is allowing us to easily connect with new users in new regions – simply put, more gamers can access the platform when carrier billing payments are enabled. More and more gamers enjoying their favourite mobile games like Call of Duty, Fortnite and PUBG through the ease of carrier billing can help us in our goal to make mobile games more fun, rewarding and better connected.”

SLA Digital connects mobile operators and merchants for carrier billing.  www.sla-digital.com

Gizer is a gamified network designed for today’s global gaming community. https://gizer.io/

 

SLA Digital Announce Partnership with Unitel to Launch Direct Carrier Billing in Mongolia

SLA Digital and Unitel logos showing the partnership of the two companies

SLA Digital have announced a new partnership with Unitel Group, a Mongolian telecommunications company, with Unitel naming SLA Digital as their managed service provider for carrier billing.

As part of the relationship, SLA Digital will also be able to offer digital content providers access to Unitel’s other payment options including IPTV payments, Toki E-Wallet and payments made via U-Point, their points based loyalty program.

Kevin Drayne, CEO at SLA Digital commented: “We are delighted to be working with Unitel to enable seamless and secure payment experiences for their customers through carrier billing. We see this relationship as a real opportunity to bring more to Unitel and their customers, by offering a vast range of digital content and entertainment with new convenient ways to pay.”

 The partnership means Unitel will be able to effortlessly introduce new digital content to customers from SLA Digital’s expanding client portfolio. Likewise, digital content providers can connect to Unitel’s mobile subscribers, and expand into this region, through a simple integration process.

 Kevin continued: “Our direct connection with Unitel Mongolia will allow our existing and new digital content partners to easily connect to the mobile operator and make the most of all the payment options available. We hope that more content and more ways to pay will lead to greater choice and satisfaction for Unitel customers.”

 SLA Digital are inviting digital content providers who would like to connect with Unitel Mongolia to get in touch at sla-digital.com/contact

Evina raises 20 million euros to secure financial services for telecom operators

 

Paris, November 18, 2021 – Paris-based cybersecurity company Evina, which operates in 70 countries, has announced a €20 million funding round to consolidate its leading position in securing financial services for telecom operators.

The future of telecom operators will not be determined by the sales strategy of cell phone plans, but by the ability to provide new services to the huge customer bases they have patiently built up. Among these, financial services are the most crucial.

The financial services offered by telecom operators today not only offer the possibility to buy digital content, mobile applications or subscriptions to major streaming platforms directly via their SIM card, but also to receive, withdraw and transfer money. The aim is both to offer a highly efficient one-click payment method with conversion rates 100 times higher than those of a bank card, and to replace and compensate for the absence of basic banking services. Especially at a time when there are more smartphones than people on earth, and 2 billion people do not have a bank account.

Today, nearly 20% of global digital content purchases go through operators. By 2021, this will be worth more than $40 billion, with double-digit annual growth. In addition, more than $2.5 trillion is flowing through operators’ e-wallets. This amount is expected to double within 5 years.

The financial services offered by operators are so successful that they have inevitably attracted organized crime from around the world. “All the criminal organizations in the world are converging on cybercrime,” warns Guillaume Poupard, the Director General of the French National Agency for Information Systems Security.

It is to face this challenge that Evina was founded in 2018 by a team of hackers, cybersecurity researchers and financial services specialists who have worked for more than 15 years in the sector they protect.

More than $1 billion saved in the last 12 months by Evina for ecosystem players

David Lotfi, CEO and founder of Evina explains how it all started: “We realized that no one knew how to stop this new generation of cybercriminals, who are extremely professional and have much more advanced technical and financial resources than before. We saw this as a major threat and decided to develop a dedicated solution. Very quickly, the largest operators around the world asked to implement our solutions.”

Evina is now present in over 70 countries. It protects the world’s largest telecom groups such as Orange and Vodacom, but also major digital merchants for whom control of operator payment is a strategic advantage. With a detection rate of 99.94% of false transactions and a false positive rate of less than 0.06%, Evina has prevented the theft of more than 1 billion euros over the last 12 months.

In recognition of its solution, Evina has received all the industry’s leading awards over the past two years, including the Global Carrier Billing Summit award for the best anti-fraud solution in 2020 and 2021 and the Juniper Award for the best financial transaction security solution in 2021.

Confidence in Evina and in the industry’s potential from US funds and historical investors

The €20 million fundraising will allow Evina to accelerate its commercial presence outside Europe, with the opening of offices abroad, and to strengthen its technical team with new talent, in order to consolidate its position as a leader in the world of financial services for telecom operators.

The round was led by New York-based Radian Capital with the support of Evina’s historical investors including 50 partners, Saas Partners and Id4VC.

“Telecom Operators are in a very strong position to offer the next generation of financial service products. And while they currently possess much of what they need – embedded customer base, access to phones, known identities, financial performance, and bank account credentials – these operators still lack the security capabilities necessary to fight the most sophisticated fraud attempts. This is why we are so excited to back the team at Evina. They bring ‘bank security’ capabilities to these Telcos that allows them to operate in 2021 and beyond.” enthused Jordan Bettman, founder of Radian Capital.

Learn more about Evina at: https://www.evina.com/