Jon Prideaux and Keith Butcher, CEO and CFO respectively of Boku, talk about the highlights of trading for the year ended 31 December 2019, which saw over 41% growth in revenues to between $50.0m and $50.5m, with EBITDA from Boku payments up 138% to at least $15.0m, and losses reduced on Boku Identity to $5.0m.
Boku, Inc. Partners with GoPay to Extend Mobile Payments Across Indonesia
Leading global businesses can now acquire new paying customers with Indonesia’s most popular e-wallet
SINGAPORE and SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, Boku Inc (AIM: BOKU), the world’s leading independent carrier commerce company, announced a partnership with GoPay, the digital payments platform of Gojek, the largest on-demand multi-service provider in Southeast Asia. Today, GoPay is the largest consumer digital payments platform in Indonesia, processing about 50% of transactions made on the Gojek platform.
Through the partnership, Boku’s merchant customers in Indonesia will be able to introduce GoPay as an additional payment method, enabling ease of payments for a greater pool of end-users. The partnership reflects the growing popularity of e-wallets as the primary payment mechanism for multiple use cases like transportation, recurring entertainment subscriptions, and in-app and in-game micro-purchases.
Indonesia’s e-wallet market is set to be the fastest-growing fintech segment in the country, with projected growth from $1.5 billion in 2018 to $25 billion in 2023, according to management consultancy Redseer.
“Boku’s mission is to make mobile transactions more simple, and this partnership with GoPay is a big step towards accomplishing that mission,” said Jon Prideaux, CEO, Boku Inc. Read full post
Do SMS OTPs Solve Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)?
This week, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) confirmed the phased roll-out of PSD2 SCA within the UK. As part of this phased approach, it is envisaged that as of March 2020, merchants will be allowed to introduce 2-Factor Authentication as an approved method to achieve SCA compliance. However, to ensure full compliance, merchants must ensure their plans are completely in place by March 2021.
The introduction of SCA by the EBA (European Banking Authority) is expected to reduce the levels of financial fraud online, which significantly impacts the global e-commerce marketplace. However, due to concerns about the ability of Issuers, Acquirers, Gateways and Merchants to deploy 2-Factor Authentication by the original 14th September 2019 deadline, the FCA has agreed to allow the use of EMVCo 3DS 2.+ (Risk Based approach) alongside one form of authentication. SMS OTP is the primary form of authentication suggested by the FCA due to the potential availability to consumers.
Is SMS OTP the Mag Stripe of the e-Commerce World?
There are meaningful concerns within the e-commerce world around the security of SMS OTP, particularly with regard to social engineering and hacking vulnerabilities. The SMS delivery mechanism – sending a message directly to a consumer’s phone – introduces a new vector that fraudsters can attack to take over individual consumers’ accounts and commit fraud. Read full post
Jack got Hacked: Why SMS OTP is a Dangerous Consumer Verification Method
You may have missed the story as you were leaving early last Friday for the long holiday weekend: Jack got hacked.
Jack, of course, is Jack Dorsey, CEO and co-founder of Twitter and Square. And ‘hacked’, in this instance, means that there were a number of inappropriate tweets that seemingly originated from his personal Twitter account. Twitter “regained control” of the account after about 15 minutes, but the damage was already done.
It’s worth examining exactly how the hackers gained access to Jack’s personal Twitter account. One might suspect that the highly visible CEO of a technology company would have best available security safeguards in place, and that any “hack” aimed at such an individual would require a tremendous amount of technical skill, coordination and resources.
Those suspicions would be wrong. The technique the hackers used was surprisingly simple and shockingly prevalent, especially in markets that have a majority of users with pre-paid mobile phone services: a SIM swap.
A SIM swap occurs when a fraudster, using a victim’s personal information gleaned off the dark web or other available sources, calls the victim’s mobile network operator (AT&T or T-Mobile, for example), and impersonating the victim, has the mobile network operator transfer the victim’s phone number to a different mobile device that is in the fraudster’s possession. Read full post
Why Layering Is Going Out Of Fashion In Consumer Authentication
For those worried about the security of identity in the age of mobile, the last few weeks have not exactly been an encouraging time to be reading the headlines. Google’s Project Zero, an in-house team tasked with finding and publishing security and privacy vulnerabilities it finds in public software, released a blog post detailing major security holes it had discovered in iPhone software going back two years.
The flaws have been fixed since February, but industry watchers were bewildered that such exploits had sat out there for so long and that Apple had needed an outside team to discover it.
Also, bewildering was the fact that Google finding a hole in Apple’s security was the second most attention-grabbing security failure last week. The unfortunate distinction of first place went to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was a victim of a SIM Swap attack that left his Twitter account spewing racist invective for about 20 minutes.
It was a hard week to feel particularly secure on a mobile device, Karen Webster observed in a recent conversation with Boku CEO Jon Prideaux, as it was easy to get the feeling that an identity thief is hiding around every corner — and perhaps in every text message or Tweet to boot. Read full post
BRR Interview – Interim Results
Boku the world’s leading independent direct carrier commerce company, announces its unaudited interim results for the period ended 30 June 2019. Highlights include revenue increase of 39% to $23.5 million, adjusted EBITDA for the Period of $4.3 million and TPV up 47% reaching $2.3 billion.
Why Mobile Phones Are The Better Consumer Authentication Mousetrap
At this point in 2019, we’ve all dealt with some flavor of two-factor authentication that uses SMS one-time passcodes. We attempt a sign-in and see a prompt that tells us that a six- (or nine, or four) digit PIN is being texted to us, and that we have to enter it to proceed with our login or password change. It’s a mild piece of friction, but it’s not terribly onerous and is doing something useful: keeping consumers safe.
Unless, of course, it isn’t. SMS one-time passcodes are more of a risk than most consumers realize, Boku CEO Jon Prideaux told Karen Webster in a recent conversation. The consumer thinks their bank is sending them a unique code that only they can directly access — but the reality is a little different.
A fraudster doesn’t always have to hack a phone to access a user’s identity and information — they can hack the person. Read full post
Navigating Identity’s ‘Big Canvas’ with Boku
The fundamental unit of trust in any transaction lies in identity — namely, ensuring that the person who shows up to transact is who they say they are. It’s also the most highly regulated part of any financial transaction.
“The identify verification that happens before accounts are opened are where governments and regulatory bodies very much tell you to do things in a certain way,” Boku CEO Jon Prideaux told Karen Webster in a recent conversation.
It’s a process that doesn’t leave much room for interpretation — either you are compliant or you’re not — and one in which companies tend to bring in a partner who can make the process of achieving and maintaining compliance less painful.
Yet it’s also a process that’s built around checking an individual’s credentials against various static data sources to confirm that person is who they claim to be and are not on any kind of watch list.
And it’s a process that, in a dynamic digital world, does not lend itself well to static data sources.
Prideaux told Webster that identity is a “big canvas,” and establishing the identity of parties is much more than a “one-and-done” check against a list. Making sure the person is authorized to use those credentials is critical to establishing trust — and it’s the sweet spot in which Boku operates. Read full post
BRR Interview – Capital Markets Day 2019
Jon Prideaux, Chief Executive Officer, and Stuart Neal, Chief Financial Officer, together with other members of the senior management team provide an overview of Boku’s strategy followed by a deeper dive into the Boku platform.
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Boku, Inc. Announces Global Partnership with DAZN to Expand Digital Content Distribution
Fast-growing sports OTT service adds innovative payment options to provide more viewers access to live and on-demand sports entertainment
LONDON, May 22, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, Boku Inc (AIM: BOKU), the world’s leading independent carrier commerce company, announced a global partnership with DAZN, the world’s first pure-sport live and on-demand streaming service, to allow subscribers to sign up and pay for the service using their mobile phone, broadband and pay TV accounts.
The collaboration will represent the first time that Boku has enabled payment capabilities through internet service provider (ISP) and traditional broadcast TV billing systems, significantly extending DAZN’s global audience reach.
Through the agreement, Boku will enable direct carrier billing and carrier bundling payment options for DAZN customers, allowing both cord cutters as well as traditional TV viewers to pay for their DAZN subscription directly via their mobile phone bill, their ISP bill and their broadcast television bill.
These payment options will be available later this year to DAZN subscribers across the world. DAZN operates in 9 countries today – Austria, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Italy, United States, Spain and Brazil – and is expanding rapidly. Read full post