The first country where the payment solution has been launched is Poland where more than 16 million Orange Polska subscribers will be able to make online payments by charging purchases to their mobile phone bill.

“Fortumo’s platform enables carriers to launch payments across a wide variety of streaming services, app stores, games and social networks, taking away merchant onboarding and integration hassles from the carrier. Orange is one of the leading telecom groups in Europe, the Middle-East and Africa, and Fortumo is glad to enable digital payments for millions of Orange users,” said Gerri Kodres, Chief Business Officer at Fortumo.

According to the World Bank, only 17% of Poles have a credit card, which means online payments are unavailable to most people in the country. At the same time, 41% of Poles already own a smartphone and consume digital content online. Carrier billing resolves the gap in payments by allowing any mobile phone owner to make purchases and charge the payments to their phone bill.

Fortumo’s direct carrier billing platform allows users to make payments over a data connection by confirming purchases with one click on their phone. Payments are processed without any additional information required from the mobile user, which provides a significant conversion improvement compared to any other online payment method.

SuperDataResearch estimates carrier billing to be the 2nd most popular payment method in Poland (19.4%) after digital wallets for payments in games. Additional information on the Polish mobile market and other countries in Central & Eastern Europe can be found from Fortumo’s recent market report.

Fortumo’s direct carrier billing platform is used by leading app stores (Google Play, Windows Phone Store), digital media companies (Sony, Hooq, Gaana) and game developers (EA Mobile, Gameloft, Rovio). In order to enable global carrier billing for these merchants, Fortumo has partnered with more than 350 mobile operators across the world.