On Tuesday, Bango announced it has acquired Docomo Digital. This is a significant, strategic deal for Bango that analysts say will accelerate our growth by 2 years. But who is Docomo Digital and what does this acquisition bring to Bango?
Prior to the acquisition, Docomo Digital was the global payments business of NTT DOCOMO – Japan’s largest telco and the world’s largest provider of DCB by value. Setting up their own alternative payments integrator made sense when you think about the volume of carrier billing payments NTT DOCOMO processes. Over 6 years of running this business, Docomo Digital has acquired many high-quality merchant and operator customers, in addition to processing the majority of NTT DOCOMO’s DCB payments.
So why did they sell it?
NTT DOCOMO believes the future growth of the online payments industry depends on supporting a common platform technology.
Why? Because in supporting a common technology, whole of market advantages can be obtained. Compared to the siloed, bilateral integrations Docomo Digital created for each customer, Bango uses a common technology across the entire merchant, operator and partner ecosystem. All customers share the same technology, so that improvements driven by customers are available through Bango to the entire ecosystem. Everyone benefits from the activity of everyone else using Bango. The data we use to improve how merchants’ market and sell boosts the customer experience for everyone.
Bango has leading technology and has been quickly growing its market share. This, added to our platform technology, gives NTT DOCOMO confidence that Bango is the right business, not only to take over Docomo Digital’s relationships with merchants and telco customers globally but also to take over its own DCB business.
For clarity, as part of the deal to acquire Docomo Digital, Bango has also entered into a multi-year, platform license agreement to provide the integration services for NTT DOCOMO’s DCB and wallet business. This agreement is a clear endorsement of Bango technology by the world’s biggest DCB operator, and a great strategic partnership for Bango.
Bango already has a relationship processing DCB payments for NTT DOCOMO with Amazon.jp. Having worked with us for many years, NTT DOCOMO has first-hand knowledge of the quality of technology and service Bango provides and this contract is clear validation of that.
In addition to NTT DOCOMO, some of the new telco names Bango has acquired as part of this deal include Telefonica O2, America Movil, Optus, Singtel Group and Deutsche Telecom. We have also acquired additional business with existing Bango operator customers including Vodafone, Airtel India and Softbank.
On the merchant side, we have significantly expanded the number of routes we operate with Amazon and Google and have acquired many additional merchant customers including Tidal, Discovery+, Sony, DAZN and Paramount+, as well as Jetstar and Shopify for non-digital products.
Acquiring Docomo Digital brings an additional $3.5B of end user spend from the c.2 billion users worldwide they reach. This is significant additional scale for Bango achieved through one deal, not just because it brings more payments revenue but also because it gives us nearly double the data to monetize via Bango Audiences. Much of Docomo Digital’s revenue is in high value locations such as Asia and Europe – locations marketers are keen to target. Users there have the propensity to spend more and therefore provide a higher return on investment for marketers allocating their budgets.
These additional users, operators and merchants directly fuel our virtuous circle strategy. More merchants bring more goods and services to Bango for payment partners to offer to their customers, more operators give merchants access to even more consumers. Both of these things drive additional spend which gives more data to monetize via the Bango Platform.
The acquisition is additive to the entire Bango business and should see our growth trajectory accelerate by roughly 2 years. This rate of growth will be supported by a larger footprint, more routes and more data. It will be earnings accretive in 2023 and, importantly, solidifies our position as a market leader.
You can find more information on the acquisition here:
