We continue to execute against our strategy, which is built around four strategic priorities: Expand, Explore, Enhance and Extract. These pillars provide a clear framework for investment and execution.

• Expand – Lead the bundling of subscription services through Telco channels

• Explore – Identify new bundling opportunities beyond Telcos

• Enhance – Use data and technology to differentiate Bango

• Extract – Manage the Payments segment for cash and profit

This is part two of our series exploring the four Bango strategic growth pillars and how each contributes to our long-term growth strategy.

Executive summary

Explore – Identify new bundling opportunities beyond Telcos

Bango has established a strong position in subscription bundling through Telcos. Explore is focused on extending Bango’s proven subscription bundling model into new distribution channels where the same technology, ecosystem and expertise can be applied. Early progress in financial services, retail and other channels provides evidence that the DVM opportunity can extend beyond Telcos, broadening Bango’s addressable market without requiring a new platform or business model.

Why look beyond Telcos?

Telcos are the initial focus for the DVM and the market where Bango has established its strongest position due to the Bango legacy payments business providing a trusted network of telco relationships. But many of the characteristics that make subscription bundling attractive to Telcos also exist elsewhere.

Banks have millions of customers but compete to make their products more relevant to consumers' everyday lives, to increase interaction and to move from a free to paid model. Retailers invest heavily in turning individual transactions into longer-term relationships. Loyalty and employee-benefit businesses need attractive services that encourage participation and engagement. Connected TV providers have an opportunity to bring an increasingly fragmented range of streaming and subscription services together into a simpler, more compelling entertainment proposition. Subscription brands themselves are increasingly interested in partnerships that can extend their reach and make their propositions more valuable.

What these businesses have in common is distribution.

They already have relationships with consumers. Subscription bundling provides a way to use those relationships to deliver additional digital products and services.

The benefits vary by market, but the underlying model is similar: combine an existing customer relationship with subscription services that make the core proposition more compelling.

For subscription providers, the equation works in the other direction. Indirect distribution provides another route to acquire customers beyond increasingly expensive direct-to-consumer marketing and advertising channels

Explore is about finding and capturing the markets where these complementary needs create the strongest opportunity.

Where are the opportunities?

Bango has already begun applying this model outside its traditional Telco base, with opportunities spanning financial services, retail and other consumer channels.

Financial services

Banks and other financial-services businesses face a particular engagement challenge. Financial products can be highly transactional, while consumers increasingly expect personalized propositions relevant to their everyday lives. With many financial-services providers offering free accounts with paid upgrade options, they need ways to increase interaction, encourage active account use and move customers toward higher-value products or relationships.

Bango sees subscription bundling as one way to change that dynamic. Digital benefits can be linked to products or customer behaviors – for example, providing a subscription benefit alongside an account, card, loan or savings proposition. This gives financial-services businesses another way to differentiate products, encourage customers toward higher-value relationships and strengthen retention. Bango's financial-services proposition is positioned around winning customers and proving a way the service provider to position more financial services in front of the consumer.

Bango has previously disclosed its first wins in financial services, including the soft launch of a leading European bank operating in 24 countries, providing early validation that the subscription bundling model can extend beyond Telcos.

Retail

Retail is dealing with a different challenge.

For many retailers, the customer relationship is still centered on individual purchases. Loyalty programs and memberships seek to turn those transactions into longer-lasting relationships, but they need benefits that give consumers a reason to keep engaging.

Subscriptions can provide that additional value.

Bundling provides retailers with the opportunity to use digital services and subscription benefits to help turn one-off purchases into recurring relationships, with propositions ranging from promotional offers to tiered memberships and ongoing loyalty benefits. It also creates new ways for customers to redeem loyalty points, including on third-party subscriptions, helping retailers reduce the value of unredeemed points held on their balance sheets.

Continente provides a real-world example.

Portugal's largest high-street retailer uses the DVM to make Disney+ available to customers through its Cartão Continente loyalty program. Continente operates more than 350 stores in Portugal, while its loyalty card is used by more than four million families. The Disney+ promotion combines discounted subscription access with cashback to the customer's loyalty card, linking a digital subscription directly to Continente's existing loyalty proposition.

Importantly, this demonstrates a clear retail objective: adding value for customers while strengthening engagement and differentiation.

It also demonstrates the speed with which the model can be deployed in a new channel. Continente went live with Disney+ just eight weeks after commercial agreement using the DVM.

Subscription brands as distributors

There is another potential route to growth: subscription brands themselves becoming distributors of complementary subscriptions.

The principle is the same. A business with an established consumer relationship can add complementary services to strengthen its proposition, while the participating subscription provider gains access to another audience.

Bango is seeing more content- provider-to-content provider bundling partnerships to emerge as businesses look for new ways to add value and reach consumers through indirect channels.

This expands the concept of a subscription reseller beyond traditional categories. The opportunity is not defined by whether a business is a Telco, bank or retailer, but by whether it has the customer relationships, commercial motivation and scale to make subscription bundling valuable.

Across these markets, the common factor is a change in how consumers access digital services.

Consumers increasingly encounter subscriptions as part of a wider relationship, through their connectivity provider, loyalty program, financial product, membership or another service they already use. The DVM enables Bango to power more of these commercial relationships.

Leveraging what Bango has already built

The strategic attraction of Explore is that entering new channels does not mean starting again.

The DVM is channel agnostic, allowing Bango to apply the same underlying platform to different reseller categories. New customers can benefit from Bango’s existing technology, catalog of subscription services, established provider relationships and experience of managing subscription bundling at scale.

The DVM’s one-to-many model also gives resellers access to a growing ecosystem of subscription partners through a single platform, with pre-stocked integrations helping reduce the commercial and technical work required to launch new offers.

For investors, this is an important distinction. Explore is not about diversifying into unrelated businesses. It is about extending an existing platform and ecosystem into additional markets where Bango sees the potential for the same model to scale.

A disciplined route to growth

Explore does not mean pursuing every market where subscriptions could theoretically be bundled.

The objective is to identify where Bango's model has the strongest fit and the greatest potential to scale.

The process can be thought of in four stages:

Identify → Validate → Prove → Scale

Identify: Where are there large customer audiences, strong consumer relationships and a clear commercial reason to bundle subscriptions?

Validate: Is the market ready? Is there demand from potential resellers and subscription providers? Does the DVM solve a meaningful commercial and technology problem?

Prove: Can Bango demonstrate the model through initial customers and propositions?

Scale: Where the model is proven, can it be repeated across additional businesses in the same market?

Expand builds depth in Bango’s established Telco market; Explore creates breadth by identifying new markets where the same model can scale. The two strategies therefore complement rather than compete with one another.

Progress at a glance

Explore has already moved beyond identifying theoretical opportunities.

• What progress have you made in financial services?
  We have disclosed our first wins in financial services, including the soft launch of the DVM with a leading European bank.

• What progress have you made in retail?
  Continente is now live with the DVM, demonstrating the opportunity to take subscription bundling into major retailers.

• Are subscription brands using the DVM to bundle other subscription services?
  Yes. Uber and LinkedIn have launched publicly, alongside further deployments with major subscription brands that we have not yet disclosed.

• What is the opportunity in connected TV?
  Our partnership with RedSquid has opened a new route to market for the DVM through connected TV.

• Are you seeing opportunities in employee benefits?
  Yes. Benefit One is live with the DVM, extending its use into the employee benefits market.

• How quickly can you launch the DVM in a new vertical?
  We have demonstrated that we can move quickly. Continente went from commercial agreement to launch in just eight weeks.

• Do you need to develop different technology to enter these new verticals?
  No. The same DVM technology is being deployed across these new verticals. That is central to the Explore strategy: taking the technology we have already developed and deploying it into new markets.

Key takeaways

• Explore broadens Bango’s growth opportunity by taking its proven subscription bundling model into new distribution channels beyond Telcos.

• Financial services, retail and other consumer markets present opportunities where subscription bundling can drive acquisition, engagement, differentiation and loyalty.

• New reseller categories strengthen both sides of the DVM ecosystem, giving subscription providers more routes to consumers while expanding Bango’s addressable market.

• Growth can leverage what Bango has already built, including the DVM platform, subscription ecosystem, provider relationships and bundling expertise.

• Explore is a disciplined expansion strategy, using an Identify → Validate → Prove → Scale approach to focus investment on opportunities with the greatest potential for long-term growth.