BOKU has announced new merchants and publishers who have selected BOKU for its convenient, bank-grade payment solution - spanning the social and casual gaming, social networking and application spaces. According to the company, its service allows over 1.8 billion potential consumers to shop online and purchase virtual goods and digital content easily and securely using their mobile phone. READ MORE

In an article titled "Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone", Claire Cain Miller and Matt Richtel write for the New York Times about Obopay (and MasterCard's MoneySend launched last week with Obopay), Boku, Zong and PayPal.

[Editor's note: one facet of a couple of these services that the article's authors fail to note is the cost of payment acceptance - and how that cost varies from service to service. In some segments - such as virtual goods where merchants have a close to zero cost of goods sold - merchants can afford to pay a lot to gain widespread acceptance on cell phones. Other merchants, with real costs of goods sold, would find the costs of these approaches out of the question. There's a similar story when it comes to person-to-person money transfer. For domestic transfers in the US, there's a certain cost sensitivity. For international remittances involving currency conversion, on the other hand, there's a much greater opportunity to price for value. Need help understanding all of this? Drop us a note here!]

In a post titled "Beaucoup Bucks" over on our sister PaymentsViews.com website, Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson takes a look at Boku, the new online payments service that was announced yesterday. Carol begins: "Boku is drop-dead easy for the consumer. The online demo is stunning in its simplicity. Never, ever, underestimate the importance of ease of use for a consumer. Especially for spontaneous purchases. In my opinion, this is right up there with 1-Click."

BOKU has announced the launch of a new mobile payments service, along with the acquisition of both Paymo and Mobillcash businesses -- two leading providers in the global mobile payments industry.

According to BOKU, its mobile payments service "enables global consumers to make online purchases of digital and virtual goods with their mobile phones. The company is creating a new standard for mobile transactions by bringing bank-grade mobile payments to the Web, and enables merchants and publishers to provide fast and reliable mobile payments to over 1.6 billion consumers globally. In a related announcement today, the company raised $13 million in venture funding led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures, and unveiled its management team." READ MORE