Fortumo, Estonia / US based mobile payments company has announced opening up of their office in India. In September of this year, Fortumo became one of the first mobile payments company to offer direct billing support for in-app purchases in India.
Fortumo currently has tie-ups with leading Indian telecom operators like Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Tata Docomo creating a potential base of 530 million users for mobile app developers.
Given that India has one of the largest base of mobile users in the world, the country is expected play a key role in Fortumo’s global expansion plans. Establishing local presence in India will help Fortumo take a local approach to one of the biggest emerging markets for online payments.
With it’s presence in India, Fortumo wants to plug the huge lacuna currently present in Indian mobile payment market. Even though India has over 800 million mobile users, over 99% of the population can not pay for content using services such as Google Play or PayPal, due to extremely low number of credit card owners in India.
Direct Carrier billing not only allows easy payments for the users, but also allows mobile app developers to monetize their apps in a more efficient and productive manner.
Fortumo has made New Delhi as their Indian headquarters and have appointed Industry veteran Sanjay Sinha as the General Manager of Fortumo India. Sanjay Sinha has worked in the mobile payments industry for more than a decade. His prior experience includes work at Yahoo India, ACL Wireless and CellNext.
On his appointment as GM of Fortumo, he commented, “Monetization is the biggest challenge for mobile developers and Fortumo is ideally positioned to solve this problem. The mobile ecosystem in India is exploding with established companies setting up their mobile identity and hordes of new start-ups launching. My goal as the general manager for Fortumo India will be to secure a central role for Fortumo in this growing market.”
Though, Fortumo’s solution is focused on smartphones, given the high percentage of feature phone users in India. they have separately created a customized payment flow for use on feature phones. The solution automatically recognizes when a feature phone environment is being used and morphs itself to enable payments on phones without in-app payment capabilities.
