Every year, direct carrier billing expands across more regions, stores and operators. The channel brings a payment option to millions of people who don’t have – or don’t wish to use – a card. Bango’s Boost tool uses analytics to help operators maximise these revenues. It’s the Meffys 2016 winner for Innovation in Engagement…

Bango has been a pioneer of carrier billing for nearly two decades. When it launched, the only option was the reverse-billed text message. Today, the process is immeasurably more efficient. Users can pay in a well-designed interface using one click.

Bango has helped operators and app stores grow their revenues significantly. But there is potential for much more. To tap into this, Bango launched Bango Boost.

This analytics tool lets operators examine customer payment data and compare it with other app stores and operators across similar markets.

It adds industry knowledge and market trends to show where tweaks can be made to boost transactions. Bango says Bango Boost action typically delivers a 20 to 40 per cent increase.

Bango Boost does this by:

• Unlocking the spending capability of existing customers by eliminating payment blockers
• Increasing loyalty by building relationships with the most important customers.
• Gaining new customers by promoting the use of carrier billing.
• Reducing churn.

Bango Boost is already in use across North America, Asia, LATAM and the Middle East. In one case, a North American had experienced a number of payment failures on Google Play, which Bango identified as related to spend limit restrictions that stopped customers from spending more.

The operator took action and growth nearly doubled. It also resulted in a significant reduction in the number of customer care calls.

Bango Boost has also been successful in developing countries where a high percentage of the population is unbanked and many users are pre-pay. The tool can help operators detect where customers are out of credit and suggest a top-up.

Trevor Goldberg, VP of business development (MNOs) at Bango, says: “It’s all about getting users to spend money. A huge number of people want to buy this way, And in markets where people are unbanked and there are low cost Android devices, there is now a real a method of payment.”