Fortumo Partners Second Largest Mobile Operator In Central & Eastern Europe


    The Estonian mobile payments provider, Fortumo, just announced a partnership with the Ukrainian mobile operator – Kyivstar. The partnership would allow Fortumo to tap into 25 million Kyivstar customers to make payments inside of Kyivstar’s App Club store without using a credit card.

    The first game to be published that will be able to use the Fortumo mobile payments is Cut The Rope by Zeptolab with games from Rovio, EA, Halfbrick, Creative Mobile and Lima Sky to follow.

    Sitting at $57 million USD in 2013, the Ukrainian digital gaming market is but a drop in the ocean when comparing to the recent Supercell sale. However when you come back to earth, it is still an attractive piece of the pie to target.

    If you also consider that out of the 30 million or so credit cards in Ukraine, over 50% are inactive and are not used to make online payments, it becomes increasingly interesting.

    This is also a good boost for the games developer community in Ukraine, as there are a lot of credit card fraud incidents, and mobile payments introduce a much simpler payment process which will reduce that.

    As Gerri Kodres, SVP of Business Development of Fortumo comments, ““This partnership will bring additional revenue to developers using Fortumo as Ukraine is one of the largest emerging markets and has great potential for mobile payments.”

    Personally, I think this has to be the way forward not just in Ukraine but anywhere else. There is always a lot of hassle in managing credit cards and paying with them. It is difficult to enter the information, and it simply is not simple enough when comparing to mobile payments.

    In fact, I would go so far as to say that mobile phone payments should be used a lot more in our everyday lives and not just for apps and games. What is your take on it?