It’s been a week since the Virtual Goods Summit. A great show put on by Charles Hudson and David Sachs. The last session of the last day had some interesting fireworks. Mike Arrington from Techcrunch traded words with Anu Shukla of Offerpal around the lead-gen business (great summary by VentureBeat here: http://bit.ly/2YLHIl).
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:
