PaymentOne reaches $5bn in micro-payment transactions

Swiftly moving from internet to mobile services with customers including AOL, Blizzard Entertainment and Gaia Online.

PaymentOne's Anyphone platform helps partners sell virtual goods and recurring digital subscriptions, charging them to the phone or broadband bill.

Like many other 'hot' firms such as Zong, Boku, Bill2Mobile, it enables payments that use the phone number rather than a long credit card number as the payment mechanism. This makes the process more secure and less fiddly.

“Previously, merchants and publishers were not able to reach the many consumers that could not or would not transact with traditional credit card process online,” said Brad Singer, executive vice president of PaymentOne. 

“Our vision of enabling more consumers to participate in the digital economy still drives the company today.  For the billions of global consumers with a mobile, fixed-line or broadband connection, PaymentOne says ‘put your wallet away’ and use your phone number to pay.”

PaymentOne believes there's huge growth to come in the space and quotes a recent Juniper Research report that says mobile phone payments for digital goods alone will exceed $250 billion globally by 2015.