Boku gets £8m war chest to take on Paypal

by Andrew McCormick, revolutionmagazine.com 16-Jun-09, 13:00

LONDON - Paypal has a new rival. Payment service Boku has bought two mobile payment providers and received £8 million of venture capital funding to fund global expansion.

Boku has acquired Paymo and Mobillcash and received multi-million pound investment from Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

The new company plans to exploit the new market of virtual goods, such as those sold on social networks and gaming sites. Boku estimates that so far in 2009 people have bought more than $500 million (£204m) of virtual goods on Facebook alone.

Boku also plans to become the default payment system for people around the world, citing research that there are around two billion bank accounts in the world and around four billion mobile phones.

James Patmore, the former managing director of Mobillcash, has been appointed managing director of the EMEA region. He told Revolution that the time is ready for this type of development.

"Content has developed hugely via social networks, gaming and virtual worlds and people are buying interactions," he said. "We're currently in over 50 countries and we're looking to improve and add value to the product as well as expanding our global footpriint."