Obopay enters social network market

October 28th, 2009

As VentureBeat reports Obopay has announced its entrance into the online games market with the immediate availability of its mobile payment solution. Both users and online merchants will experience many advantages by using Obopay’s easy, secure and convenient mobile payment service. Users can mobilize their credit or debit card by linking it to their mobile phone number, making it easier and safer than ever to quickly purchase goods online. Online merchants can enjoy better economics and revenue opportunities with Obopay.

This mobile payment solution targeted for the social network market is a natural extension of Obopay’s existing product offering. There are significant synergies, in terms of demographic and usage patterns, between online gamers and the general mobile payments market.

“We are excited about the opportunity to bring our mobile payment expertise and credibility into the online payments market. The growth of the online game industry shows tremendous promise and is impacting the development and monetization of social networks,” said Carol Realini, founder and CEO of Obopay. “Obopay is making it easy and safe to purchase online games and digital goods. Our “stay, pay and play” solution benefits both the gamer and the merchant. This product launch further illustrates our commitment to bringing innovative solutions to a generation that trusts the power of their mobile phone.”

Features include:

• With Obopay’s online mobile payment solution, consumers can quickly and easily make purchases in-game with a credit or debit card. Returning users can simply use their mobile phone number and a PIN of their choosing to pay without having to disrupt the game experience or leave the application. When playing a game on the Facebook platform, for example, players would not need to be redirected to another site to make payments.
• Because users can “stay, pay and play,” the Obopay solution offers improved economics and increased conversion rates for merchants as they will stay longer in-game due to the positive user experience.
• The service also provides online merchants better revenue opportunities than carrier billing alternatives that require the merchants to give up a large part of their revenue to their payment provider and they can receive money from transactions faster.
• Already in live production today with online merchants and game publishers.

“While online games have been growing for some time, the biggest story of the past year had been the meteoric rise of social gaming and virtual goods,” commented David Cole, president, DFC Intelligence, a market research firm focused on video games, PC games, online games and interactive entertainment. “We forecast that over the next five years the worldwide online game market will nearly double to reach over $17 billion by 2014. Much of this growth will be driven by developers and merchants increasingly producing sophisticated online business models and payment platforms to maximize monetization.”