Viettel and Fortumo has announced a partnership through which Fortumo will bring direct carrier billing for Viettel subscribers. More than 55 million Vietnamese will soon be able to purchase digital content online by charging payments to their mobile phone bill.
As a result of the partnership, Fortumo will provide the billing platform to Viettel to enable the launch of carrier billing on major app stores as well as for many top Asian digital content merchants including Box TV, Ditto TV, Gaana, UCWeb/Alibaba, Mobogenie, Octro and Games2Win.
“Mobile operators get the best value out of their billing platform if they enable payments for app stores but also for video and music streaming providers, game developers and other digital merchants. Viettel is the leading mobile operator in Vietnam and we are excited to work together with them in launching carrier billing for app stores as well as for other top tier digital companies,” said Gerri Kodres, chief business officer at Fortumo.
According to the World Bank, credit card penetration in Vietnam is below 2% and debit card penetration stands at 27%. This means that only a quarter of the 36 million smartphone owners in the country currently have access to online payments without mobile payments. The direct carrier billing partnership between Viettel and Fortumo aims to bridge this gap in payment access as online payments become available to anyone who owns a mobile phone.
Fortumo’s direct carrier billing platform is currently available to over 2.5 billion consumers in 16 Asian countries (Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand & Vietnam). Globally Fortumo covers 94 countries and reaches 4.3 billion consumers with its carrier billing solution.
