As mobile penetration increases over time, more and more people are accustomed to this form of communication – not just by phone but also via SMS. In addition to instant interaction, consumers use SMS for other purposes. It does more than text messaging. SMS is one technology with five dimensions. Let’s take a look at what SMS is capable of.

SMS as Communication – Say it!

SMS has its own charisma in terms of communication — it is expressive, rich in emotions, recordable, and sometimes, avoiding embarrassment. This is the absolute mainstream that dominates the SMS markets. Communication, being the basic form of SMS, has extended to other forms such as Chat-box. Placing an SMS-Chatbox on your webpage gives you an alternative to interact with your friends and visitors. It could serve as personal interaction, or as marketing and public relations – posting ads and announcements via SMS.

SMS as Entertainment – Enjoy it!

In addition to customised jokes and mind twisters, another common type of SMS-Entertainment is song requests. By sending an SMS to request a song, the consumer conveys his/her emotions with the audio aid. A song speaks more than a thousand words, doesn’t it? For those who read Chinese, here’s a model for you. A TV programme from Yunnan, China, which used our SMS service for song request.

SMS as Information – Spread it!

The fact that we like to be well informed is without doubt. SMS, sending and receiving via mobile handsets, is the medium that synchronizes us with the information desired. The common types of SMS-Information are horoscopes, news updates and daily quotes. For regional preferences, sports tips are popular in the Balkans whereas stock exchange info is in great demand in China.

SMS as Campaign – Do it and be part of it!

SMS-Campaign is one of the common practices of short message applications. It is mainly the cooperation with service providers and/or interactive media. Consumers send an SMS to participate in the campaign, be it trivia, text-and-win, voting or registering at an event. This kind of campaign often involves short-term and impulsive consumer behaviour. Whether it’s large-scale campaigns like voting for American Idol, or small ones like local TV show’s talent-search, they all cultivate a big revenue streams from the impulsive consumer expenditure.

SMS as Payment – Pay it and play it!

Payment tools are like transportation – transferring the monetary values from the payers to the payees. SMS as payment is the most efficient way of transferring money to content/service providers and selling virtual credits. The special features with SMS – anonymity, security, spontaneity and popularity – encourage consumer spending and thus raise the revenue streams. It lives up to the consumer demands for purchasing virtual credits in real-time without delay. From provider’s perspective, the convenient buying process of SMS/Mobile-payment converts much greater purchases, and thus generates higher revenues.

The multi-dimensions of SMS allow text message to achieve other functions such as mobile payment. The alternatives do not just stop here – a lot have already been developed, for example mobile parking, mobile ticketing, and mobile banking solution. And more are yet to come.

Whichever dimensions you are interested in, Fortumo provides the best solutions with our various service types and multiple country choices. With mobile payment alone, Fortumo has upgraded from Premium SMS-Connectivity to the all-in-one international payment solution FortuMoPay.

Start to ride on the mobile wave from here.



Summer is coming and Fortumo decided to take you on a trip to an exotic destination. Please, be most welcome in Greece – the newest member of the Fortumo Family!

The Hellenic Republic, or as most of us know it as Greece, is the heart of one of the eldest civilizations – the Ancient Greek civilization. Its reach was tremendous – from the southern parts of Italy to the west  to the coastal lines of Turkey and Black sea to the east. From the Balkan Peninsula to the northern parts of Africa. Moreover, the Greeks’ influence over the world as we know it today is even more impressive. Greece is the motherland of philosophers like Plato and his student Aristotle; mathematicians like Pythagoras, Thales and Euclid and even the world-famous inventor and astronomer Archimedes (Eureka!). Additionally, this country on the shores of the Mediterranean sea  is the place where you can go back in the ages and visit the famous Acropolis of Athens. It is believed to be built at least at the 7th century BC. Originally it was the most important Acropolis in whole Greece while today it is one of the most attractive tourists destinations. After this really brief history note, you can understand why the Greeks pride themselves on their origin.

Once playground of Zeus and the Gods of Olympus (the highest mountain in Greece), today Greece is a modern country with well developed IT sector and flourishing tourism. With total area of about 51,000 square miles and over 11 million population, Greece is the southernmost sea border of the European Union. The mobile penetration there is the highest through whole Europe – 180% (as of September 2009) and the internet penetration rate is 46%. Purely impressive! Add the fact that Greece ranked 26th in 2009 in the world by purchasing power parity GDP (according to the International Monetary Fund) and you will pretty much understand why Greece is your services’ next destination.

Just click here and we will show you how to go there!

As Fortumo keeps expanding our coverage to different countries and continents, we’ve got users asking about the regional differences in various markets. The table below shows the mobile penetration rates in different regions with some fun notes. Overall, Europe is the fully saturated market, whereas Asia Pacific and North America are also mature markets looking up to break 100% penetration in the coming year. Africa and Latin America are comparatively smaller judging by the stats, and yet with the launch of African Information Society Initiative and the latter’s gradual privatization of telecom industry, these two markets are expected to have the most notable uplift in mobile penetration and telecom renovations.

It cannot be said enough: statistics are fluctuating, but the message behind is substantial. What’s the message this time? The prospects for each market are. just.promising.

Regardless of the regional differences, all markets show long-term prospects. Mobile industry is not just growing — it is growing wild at an unprecedented speed, country-wise and revenue-wise. It’s up to you which market you want to enter. Fortumo is already present in 4 continents/37 countries, and more is yet to come.

I will not to squeeze in too much info for now. After all, you just heard about the launch of FortuMoPay yesterday – it takes some time to absorb the great news and try it yourself =)

It’s no secret that – partly thanks to mobile payments –  more and more web-based businesses are profiting from the sale of virtual goods. Mobile payments in an online environment are growing faster than ever. Some experts believe that we are just in the beginning of this exciting journey.

In order to make the journey smoother for you, we’ve been working on a new service called FortuMoPay.

FortuMoPay is an international mobile payments service for selling credits in online games, web applications and social networks.

Let me walk you through how FortuMoPay works:

First, you let FortuMoPay know how much you want to charge for a “credit”, “virtual currency”, “silver coin” or whatever you want to call the good that you are selling. (Let’s say you have an online game and you want to sell 1 credit for 0.10 EUR.)

Then, FortuMoPay will automatically activate all available price points in all Fortumo countries. For example, in France, Fortumo can bill users 0.35 EUR, 0.5 EUR, 1.5 EUR and 3 EUR. Therefore, if the user chooses to pay 1.5 EUR, he would receive 15 credits. If he chooses to pay 3 EUR, he would receive 30 credits. The coolest thing is that it works out-of-the-box: you do not need to worry about short codes, keywords or conversion rates!

All you need to do is to set up a script on your server that communicates with Fortumo through HTTP protocol and embed your brand new FortuMoPay button to your site:

Clicking on the button will activate the end-user payment flow, handled by Fortumo. Click on the button (above) to try it!

We are happy to let you know that FortuMoPay is now officially available. Like all other Fortumo services, setting it up is quick, easy and free. Why not take your mobile payments experience to a next level and give FortuMoPay a try?

FortuMoPay is available here.

Surveys show that incremental revenues are much more affected by payment conversion rates than by transaction costs. Mobile payment, with its advantages, completes purchases over 67%. Most of such reports present the statistical results. Yet numbers are a fluctuating reference. For a service provider and a marketer, it is crucial to understand not just the effects but the market factors in order to make the business substantial.

Based on our user experiences, here are the four causes that drive people to adopt mobile payment.

It’s EVERYWHERE Mobile phones have worldwide reach and are always within our reach. From the research of Bank of Finland, it shows that the US mobile penetration has passed 91%, with 234 million mobile phone users compared to 176 million credit/debit card holders. It has fundamentally become the can’t-do-without tool that one carries. The accessibility is always the first factor to take into consideration and consumers opt for what’s within their reach at all times.

It’s SECURE Mobile payment allows you to have full control of every single transaction. To ensure the message is coming from you, the purchase is identified remotely using some identifiers like entering the code from the reply message. No more worries on being spied by viruses or Trojan horses that memorize your ID codes and make fabricated payments without you noticing it. With the commands and data input fully under your control, you are guaranteed with total payment security.

It’s ANONYMOUS Mobile payment ensures you a high level of privacy for personal data and preference. We all know that card payment takes your personal information and sends you the bill with product/service names and transaction details. Contrary to that, the only info that mobile payment requires is your phone number. It is anonymous and gives you the privacy of purchasing things that you’d prefer to keep a low profile;)

It’s IMPULSIVE Mobile payment is perfect for impulsive buyers. We buy what we need and what we want. Wanting something doesn’t necessarily equal to in need of it. The complicated card payment process encourages re-thinking whether the product is needed, and more often than not, leads to the withdrawal of the purchase. On the other hand, thanks to the small amount involved in each mobile transaction and the simple buying process, buyers complete the payment instantly without hesitation.

Simple enough: the four causes that consolidate the whole cycle of mobile payment ecosystem. And it only gets better.

Any thoughts on mobile payment? What would you like to know more about it? Speak up and leave us your feedback. As always, Fortumo meets your requests : )

The time flies by so fast. Winter is passing, Springtime is beginning, and now Easter is over. Yet, it seems that nothing can stop Fortumo from expansion. This time we have added two new countries to our coverage map: Austria and South Africa. Not only have we expanded coverage in Central Europe, but we have also added another continent.

South Africa, located at the southernmost region of Africa, is a home for 50 million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and religions. It is the largest energy producer and consumer on the continent, as well as a popular tourist destination. What is more, South Africa was a founding member of United Nations and African Union, and is a member of WTO and G-20. With mobile penetration breaking 100% and highly developed industry centres like Pretoria, Johannesburg or Cape Town, South Africa becomes a very attractive ground for mobile business.

The second country introduced is Austria – the European capital of classical music, mother land of Mozart and Strauss. At the same time Austria is one of the 12 richest countries in the world, member of United Nations and European Union, and founder of OECD. Mobile penetration in this mountainous and skiing-friendly country reaches over 136%. If you already run mobile services in Germany, you can easily expand it to Austria, taking advantage of the same language and similar culture.

So don’t wait any more and start SMS-services in South Africa and Austria.

Remember the super-duper cool facebook application we revealed in the previous Fortumo User Tells a Story? With no further ado, here we invite Che-Ming Lin, the developer of this application and also the creator of souse.cc, to share his successful business model.

What is your SMS service about?

This Facebook SMS Live Feed application allows people to update their real-time status to Facebook wherever they are, with or without internet access.

Whom is this service for?

This SMS service is open to every Facebook members, whether they are in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Asia or Europe – as long as they’re in the countries where Fortumo operates, they can use it freely and wildly. Better yet, Facebook SMS Live Feed benefits those without immediate or 24-7 internet access — a mobile phone at hand makes your sharing most impromtu and real-time : )

Where did the idea of developing Facebook SMS Live Feed application come from?

A: This application is designed for people who have a spontaneous urge to share with their friends while being outdoors, like waiting for bus or queueing. For example, for a brief sentence such as “won ten grand lottery, hurrrraaayyyy!”, would you phone every of the friends that you want to share with, or simply send a SMS to update your facebook status and get everyone’s attention?

Nowadays micro-bloggings like Twitter and Plurk have been crazily popular , and Facebook status update is part of the kind. I think the intention of having microblogs is brilliant — people get to share their thoughts or daily happenings without having to post long articles. Yet I also hope this kind of sharing should not be confined to the cyber world. That’s what motivated me to develop Facebook SMS Live Feed application – to enable everyone to share and update status without the limitation of location and internet.

Why did you decide to integrate Fortumo’s SMS service to your web business?

As I mentioned in our previous interview, Fortumo’s SMS platform is the easiest and most user-friendly payment channel I’ve experimented so far. Plus its multi-country functionality, I can run my Facebook application in 36+ countries without any budget.

Mobile payments and virtual goods industry have built a strong monetary connection, and have been the hot topic of Fortumo’s recent posts, in case you haven’t noticed

What is mobile payment anyway? What makes it the most favourable payment channel among the gamers? Why do people keep talking about this buzzword and publish tons of observations about it?

As the name implies, it is the payment method that processes real-time transaction via mobile phones, and is noted for its high mobility. Yet skepticism about mobile payments is not unusual. Having discussed so much about the upsides of mobile payment, today we’re here to help you better understand this billing channel by breaking the myths, stereotypes or preconceptions, whatever you name it.  The common myths associated with mobile payments can be broken down into the following three categories.

No more myths and doubts about mobile payments. Here we present to you the realities, the hard facts.

Money matters

• MYTH: “high transaction fee?”
• REALITY: Financial issue is always the key concern in business. Like mobile payment, card payment also takes transaction fee that is around 3% plus commission. Yet due to its ubiquity and real-time processing, mobile payment has been proven to have higher conversion rate than other payment methods. As the previous post pointed out, few clicks, anywhere, anytime. People takes the easiest path. Naturally, much higher conversion rate leads to greater revenue.
• QUESTION: as a service provider, spending a bit more transaction fee, but converting greater numbers of clients to use your service, which payment option is of real business to you? Read the rest of this entry »

As a passionate gamer myself (or a previously-passionate one) I often follow the news at the gaming market. Recently, GamesIndustry.com and TNS posted a report on the revenue from the MMO games.

Among the many facts sated, there was some information that I definitely want to share with you. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuous development is crucial to any project’s success and Fortumo is not an exception. That is why we work hard on expanding our coverage, creating new service types and improving the overall reliability of our system. But apart from big functionality boosts, we constantly work on smaller improvements, that make our user’s life easier. The best part is that most of the ideas come from you guys. After all it’s you, who know the most about  Fortumo user experience. Usually we don’t mention smaller changes in our release notes, but this time I would like to let you know about the latest improvements.

Read the rest of this entry »