Ron Hirson will be on a panel with:

Moderator: Meaghan Schaefer, CMO, edo interactive
Speakers:
Darren Cross, Director of Business Development, Fandango
John Trimble, Chief Revenue Officer, Pandora
Ian Wolfman, Chief Marketing Officer, imc²
Jeanniey Mullen, Global EVP, CMO, Zinio
Ron Hirson, SVP Product & Marketing, Boku

They’ll be discussing:

The Mobile Commerce Experiment: There is a slew of mobile commerce experimentation starting to pop up on mobile networks and devices. From Pizza Hut’s mobile app which allows consumers to place pizza orders to P&G’s microsite which allows customers to purchase products through the Drugstore.com mobile site, branded direct response campaigns seem to be picking up steam fueled by mobile commerce applications. When will we reach a tipping point in the consumer psyche in regards to making purchases through a mobile Internet site or an App? eCommerce was a huge driver in the growth of Internet advertising; is this the final piece of the puzzle for mobile?

Hope to see you there.

Here is the press release we issued today:

GLOBE GCASH and BOKU Partner To Create The Blueprint For International Mobile Payments
BOKU enables Globe mobile subscribers to purchase virtual goods from merchants around the world via the GCASH mobile wallet

February 16, 2010 – MANILA, PHILIPPINES AND SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Globe Telecom, a leading mobile operator in the Philippines through its wholly owned mobile commerce subsidiary G-Xchange Inc (GXI), is partnering with BOKU, Inc., a global leader in mobile payments, to expand acceptance of the Globe GCASH service internationally, the companies announced today. The deal opens the BOKU mobile payment platform and growing international merchant community to Globe’s GCASH subscribers.

By partnering with BOKU, GCASH extends its reach outside the Philippines to a global community of more than 1,000 BOKU merchant partners and a mobile payments community that covers over 190 carriers worldwide, allowing its users to purchase virtual goods from any merchant in the BOKU global merchant network.

“The Philippines is one of the richest markets in the world for mobile payments.” said Rizza Maniego-Eala, President of G- Exchange, Inc. “Since its inception in 2004, GCASH has been the most widely used mobile payment method for online purchases in the Philippines.  BOKU’s focus on mobile payments, specialized team, large merchant base, and tier-one investors makes them the perfect partner in providing GCASH subscribers with a rich new experience in mobile commerce, that opens up the opportunity to explore and purchase virtual goods from the vast international market.”

“This partnership is a perfect meeting of two companies’ visions for the way to pay in the future” said Mark Britto, CEO of BOKU. “This is a great model for mobile payments, enabling carriers to reach global merchants through BOKU’s network, expanding capabilities for online and physical purchases, while driving increased carrier revenues and reducing subscriber churn.”

BOKU launched in June 2009 and has seen tremendous growth in the last year.  Over this brief period the company has developed direct mobile payments service relationships with over 1,000 game and application developers, including almost all of the top applications for virtual goods and currencies purchased on Facebook.  BOKU’s mobile payment service, Paymo, is enabled across 190 carriers worldwide in over 60 countries, and reaches a potential 1.8 billion customers.

Useful Links:
GCASH Website:  http://www.globe.com.ph/gcash
BOKU Website:  http://www.BOKU.com
Paymo Website:  http://www.paymo.com
Watch a demo of BOKU in action:  http://bit.ly/2CEUoE
BOKU blog:  http://blog.BOKU.com/
Media Kit:  http://www.BOKU.com/press/media/

About GXI and GCASH
G-Xchange, Inc. (GXI) is a pillar in m-commerce and a fully-owned subsidiary of Globe Telecom, which is a leading full service telecommunications company in the Philippines. GXI pioneered the revolutionary model in cardless and cashless mobile commerce service called GCASH which was launched in the Philippines in October 2004. GCASH is an internationally-acclaimed micro payment service which transforms a mobile phone into a virtual wallet for secure, fast, and convenient money transfers at the speed and cost of a text message. Since GCASH launch, GXI has established a wide network of local and international partners that includes government agencies, utility companies, cooperatives, insurance companies, remittance companies, universities, and commercial establishments which have agreed to accept GCASH as a means of payment for products and services.

About BOKU
BOKU is creating the standard for online payments using your mobile phone, making it easy to pay for digital goods and social experiences across the web. With a strong focus on reliability and security, BOKU’s goal is to bring bank-grade payments technology and mobile users together on the web, creating a trusted, viable and accessible market for consumers, publishers and carriers alike. Based in San Francisco with offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America, BOKU reaches over 1.8 billion consumers worldwide, and is funded by leading entrepreneurs and venture capitalists Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. For more information, please visit BOKU.com.

BOKU, Paymo and Pay by Mobile are registered trademarks or trademarks of BOKU, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. BOKU reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice.

Media Contact in the US:
David Speiser
Stage Two Consulting
david@stagetwo.com
650.515.6635

Globe & GXi Media Contact:
Yoly Crisanto
Head of Corporate Communications Division, Globe Telecom
+63 2 7302627
yccrisanto@globetel.com.ph

Richie Sison
GXI - Head of Marketing
+63 917 818 9111
jasison@globetel.com.ph

If you’re at either of the two shows and would like to meet up, please email bd at boku dotcom.

Hope to see you there,

The BOKU team

Our second big piece of news is the introduction of our consumer-facing brand, Paymo. While we love the BOKU brand, after exhaustive and global testing we’ve determined that Paymo is a universally understandable brand, irrespective of culture, language, or background that resonates with consumers. So the Paymo brand is what customers will see when they checkout online using their mobile phones.

We’ve had a whirlwind experience as a company with a lot of exciting activity since our launch in June 2009 (only seven months ago!) Today is another thrilling milestone in an exciting tenure as a growing, active company.

We’ve also received a warm reception from bloggers, writers, and pundits in the online and traditional press, who have been spreading the word today. The list of who covered our news is below, and we’ll keep adding to it as we see more stories come out.

Thanks to our customers, our partners, and our investors for all your support and confidence. 2010 is going to be an exciting year!
-The BOKU Team

•    All Things D
•    MSN Money
•    TechCrunch
•    VentureBeat
•    Moco News
•    Washington Post
•    Silicon Alley Insider
•    Virtual Goods News
•    Payments News
•    Paid Content
•    Inside Social Games
•    Alt Assets
•    Wireless Week
•    Fierce Mobile Content
•    Nonstop Tech News
•    Telecom Paper
•    SF Business Times
•    Digital Media Wire
•    THE Paypers
•    Strategy Eye

This will work similar to mobile payments in that $10 will show up on your mobile phone bill. Mobile donations have *no* carrier fees.   BOKU is not the provider of this service, we just want to get the message out about this opportunity to help.

More details can be found here:

http://newsroom.redcross.org/2010/01/12/disaster-alert-earthquake-in-haiti/

and here:

http://www.redcross.org/en/

Thanks,
The BOKU Team

• 58 countries (Estonia, who knew)
• Great funding partners (Benchmark, Index, & Khosla)
• Management team brought together
• 1000+ partners including the top gaming companies on the internet and social networks

We’d like to thanks all of our friends, family, co-workers, and partners for making 2009 a phenomenal year.  Here’s to an even better 2010.

- The BOKU Team

Last Thursday, BOKU’s co-founder Ron Hirson presented in front of 350 attendees at Dealmaker Media’s Under The Radar conference in Mountain View, CA. Ron was there to highlight what we were doing as a company and what we were doing to help “beat the odds” and offer some insight for startups presenting on what they could do to succeed. You can view Ron’s presentation by clicking here.

Here are some photos from BOKU’s showing at Under The Radar:

BOKU gear at the Under The Radar conference.

Ron showing Greg Grunberg, from the NBC show Heroes, the BOKU-copter.

Greg Grunberg playing with the BOKU-copter.

Ron being interviewed by BNetTV.com

Ron showing how the BOKU-copter works to BNetTV.com

I thought it might be worthwhile posting our thoughts on the space as we’re partnered with many of the payments aggregators to provide direct mobile payments, which means our direct-payment button appears in some screenshots near the types of offers that are under review.

We have built BOKU as a direct payments company, in the same category as Paypal, VISA, and other major credit cards.  We are purely focused on mobile payments.  BOKU does *zero* lead generation, CPA, subscription offers, IQ quizzes or the like. We enable customers to purchase virtual goods and currencies directly (not indirectly) via their mobile phone.  The offers that are being discussed in the blogosphere are around those companies that provide subscription services after lead-gen offers like quizzes, IQ tests, or wallpaper downloads, etc.   **BOKU does not provide such services.**

BOKU does not target an under-age audience, and avoids entirely the use of any subscription offers and lead generation techniques. In essence, we do the same things that VISA and Paypal do.  Our direct payment system is highly secure, and in lock-step with the policies and standards of the credit card industry.

Overall, we think it benefits the industry to have a open discussion around keeping customers safe as it relates to this lead-gen business. We look forward to the results of the efforts of platforms (social networks), games and offer providers to ensure that in the end the industry that we’re all working for, keeps the customer safe and secure, as they are the core of ours, and any business.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions. ron [at] boku dotcom or press [at] boku dotcom.

To view how our service works, see this video here:

We’re here at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco to continue to let people know who we are. We brought along our legendary Boku Copter and track jackets that we’re going to give away to some lucky people attending the conference. In order to win, all they have to do is wear a Boku button and display it in the most creative way.

During the morning breaks, we gave away a couple of American Apparel-style jackets and even some cool remote controlled helicopters that we got some lucky winners to try out and fly out in the foyer of the Westin hotel.

8:45 am - Boku at the Virtual Goods Summit.

Introducing the Boku Copter - we’re giving them away to some lucky attendees!

11:15 am - We’re at the Virtual Goods Summit!

11:29 am The first winner shown playing with the Boku Copter.

11:33 am - Andy is the second recipient of the Boku Copter.

11:45 am  - Robbyn receives the third Boku Copter!

2:37 am - People just love our Boku Copter!

2:43 pm - The Boku Copter makes its way through the crowd.

More photos from our giveaway can be found on our Flickr page.

See some video of the Boku Copter by visiting our YouTube page.

I’m speaking at 4:15 on the following panel:

The Payments Landscape – Virtual Goods Payment Options

• Lex Bayer, Spare Change
• Adam Caplan, Super Rewards
• Ron Hirson, BOKU
• Will O’Brien, TrialPay
• Roger Wood, ORCA
• Moderator: Charles Hudson, Virtual Goods Summit

We’ll also be giving away BOKOpters and American Apparel jackets tomorrow. Details tomorrow.

BOKU at Virtual Goods Summit

Hope to see you there.

If you want to meet up dm @hirson or email chris.hickson [at] boku dotcom or kurt [at] boku dotcom.

BOKU Team