Boku lands $35M from Telefonica, NEA to expand mobile payments

The mobile payments gold rush continues. Boku, a company best known for its carrier payment offering, announced today that it has received an additional $35 million investment led by Telefonica Digital and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).

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The funds will be used to expand Boku Accounts, the company’s white-label platform to let any carrier offer point-of-sale mobile payments on smartphones, as well as to expand the team, infrastructure, and the company’s global presence. The news comes at the same time PayPal is unveiling its new mobile payments hardware to compete with Square. PayPal’s announcement is expected later today.

“Payments is an industry that requires scale, and in the three years since Boku launched we’ve grown rapidly to partner with more than 250 mobile network operators, processing transactions in 67 countries around the world,” Boku CEO Mark Britto said in a statement today.

In addition to its investment, Telefonica has signed a global payments partnership with Boku, which will see the carrier pushing mobile payments to merchants and consumers alike.

San Francisco, Calif.-based Boku has raised a total of $75 million in funding across several rounds. This most recent round also received participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, DAG Venture, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

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