Publisher FAQ

Want to know how BOKU works? How to get up and running? Or how much money you could be making? Dig in.

01. What is BOKU?

BOKU is an online payments service that makes it easy and safe for consumers to pay for virtual and digital goods with their mobile phones. Hundreds of gaming, entertainment and social sites are using BOKU to increase total revenue, broaden their international footprint, and monetize unbanked or underbanked audiences. To use BOKU, only a mobile phone number is needed; there is no credit card or bank account required.

02. How do BOKU mobile payments work?

Just integrate a “Pay by Mobile” button anywhere in your website experience. A customer clicks the button, enters their phone number, and completes a transaction by replying to a text message. Customers don’t have to leave your site or register… it takes just seconds to buy.

03. Why should I add BOKU as a payment option?

BOKU is easy to integrate, easy to use, secure, and most importantly, it boosts your revenue with high conversion rates from under-monetized audiences such as unbanked, underbanked, or card-averse demographics such as tweens and teens. Specific benefits include: increased revenues; access to a large, global market; large consumer footprint; no special publisher software or technology required; easy, customized integration; multiple pricing and billing models.

04. What carriers and countries do you cover?

Through dozens of carrier relationships, BOKU reaches over 1.6 billion customers in 50+ countries worldwide. We are continually launching new carriers and countries. Please see our latest Carriers and Coverage.

05. What are your average conversion rates?

In the virtual goods market, we see average conversion rates of 50-60% when a customer clicks to pay with BOKU, which is higher than other forms of payment. In some regions where mobile payments are widely adopted, we see conversion rates as high as 80%.

06. What about the wireless carriers? What do they charge?

Mobile carriers do take a decent-sized fee, which ranges from 25-45% depending on country and carrier. Our revenue opportunity page helps you determine how much you can make from BOKU, despite these fees. If you have questions about fees in your areas of global interest, please contact us.

07. Why should I choose BOKU payments when your total costs are higher than other payment methods?

BOKU’s conversion is very high (from 50 - 80%) and reaches customers (unbanked, underbanked, card-averse audiences) who might not usually choose to pay for your goods/services. BOKU’s “take” is the same as all other payment aggregators or alternate forms of payment online: between 5-10%. Additional carrier fees are charged on top of this amount and apply to all mobile payment providers, including BOKU.

We believe that when you sell high-margin goods, such as virtual goods, it’s best to focus primarily on increasing your overall revenue vs. reducing cost. To increase revenue, BOKU can help in two ways:

- Sell more goods: Because of our global reach and our simple, no-registration, 3-step purchase, our conversion rates are high. Check out our Revenue Opportunity to see how to improve your business with BOKU.

- Charge higher prices: We’re the most flexible on pricing and billing models. On pricing, BOKU has more price points and higher price points than our competition. On billing, we allow you to pass on the carrier fees to consumers if you need to make some short-term gains in margin.

08. How do I get started?

Just fill out our Publisher signup form and we’ll get back to you with more information in a few days.

09. What is the integration process at a high level?

Once you fill out our publisher signup form and we respond to you with your publisher account details, integration can take anywhere from two hours to two weeks, depending on how customized you want to make it. In a nut-shell, all you do is:
- Write some code to embed our iFrame into your site.
- Choose the currency you want to be paid in and the countries you want to enable.
- Provide us with a callback URL.
- Make money.

10. What technical skills are required to integrate BOKU payments?

You can use any programming language you want. However, knowledge of HTTP, specifically constructing Get and Post requests, is required.

11. How long does it usually take to get integrated?

We’ve had developers integrate in two hours, and even with a fully customized integration it only takes 1-2 weeks.

12. How do BOKU payments integrate with my website?

We have several options ranging from a simple HTML iFrame to advanced API integration. The iFrame embeds into your web page (either inside an experience or inside the cart), meaning the customer never leaves your site to fill out separate registration or check-out forms. You can also link out to a full browser page that we’ll host or customize the experience with our Advanced API version.

13. Can I control the look and feel of BOKU on my web site?

Yes. You can control most of the basic look and feel elements of the iFrame via CSS. However, you cannot change the end user flow unless you use the Custom UI available for a deeper integration.

14. Why can't I generally change the end user flow?

We have worked hard to make the product flow as easy and simple as possible, while still remaining compliant with each carrier’s rules and regulations. To keep carrier and fraud standards high, we need to ensure a consistent, safe BOKU user experience across publishers.

15. How often do I get paid?

Once you receive your first payment, BOKU pays out every 30 days. Your initial payment may take between 60-90 days to receive (from the end of the month that the initial transaction took place), because that’s how long it takes for the carrier to bill the user and pay BOKU. Once we get paid by the carrier, we pay you within a matter of days. We do not hold your money to earn a float.

16. My company operates in several countries, how does that affect how we get paid?

It doesn’t. BOKU calculates payouts in USD, GBP or Euro (depending on your settings) and converts into your chosen currency prior to settlement. (Please note that exchange rates may vary on the day of conversion into your payout currency.)

17. Do you provide publisher/developer support?

Yes. Once you are approved, we assign an account manager to your business who will help you use mobile payments in the best way for your business. Our team is part web, part payments, part mobile, so we love to test and optimize your experience as you evolve.

18. Do you provide support for my customers?

Yes. We have a team of multi-language customer support specialists with 5+ years experience helping customers with mobile payments. Both local and email support are provided, and, in some cases, coordination with your customer support team can be arranged.

19. How will my customers know how to contact Customer Support?

We list phone numbers and an email form for customer support on our Contact Support page as well as in every SMS and/or on your customers’ carrier statement.

20. What if my customers' don't speak English?

Our customer support team offers multi-language support.

21. What does BOKU look for when reviewing publisher applications?

We’re looking for partners with established businesses, thousands of users, and significant revenue or revenue potential.

22. Are there businesses that BOKU cannot accept as publishers?

We can’t work with gambling websites, adult content publishers, money transfer services, physical goods retailers, or anyone distributing content for which they do not have a license.

23. What if we're a smaller company that really wants to use BOKU payments?

Rest assured we still want to work with you. We will be launching a solution for smaller publishers and individual users in the next few months. Feel free to register your interest and please bear with us as we get a solution in place

24. Does BOKU have a monthly fee?

BOKU’s fee is a percentage of each transaction as detailed in the BOKU Publisher Agreement. The minimum monthly BOKU fee is $1,000. The fee minimum will be waived for the first three months to allow publishers to implement and deploy BOKU.
Got a question or have some feedback for us? We’re here to help.