Paris-based Hi-media, a publicly held company that operates an ad network, a publishing business and a payments platform around the world, has opened a San Francisco office to expand its micropayments business to the U.S. Release.
The office will be headed by Pooj Preena, Hi-media USA CEO, who previously helped Skype enter the U.S. market. As the micropayments industry has heated up recently, the company will compete directly against startups, such as Boku and Zong, and hopes to help merchants sell mainly virtual goods using various payment options, including mobile phones, gift cards, pre-paid cards and home-phone billing. Preena told mocoNews: “We’ve been doing this for eight to nine years. We started with selling content, before social gaming took off—it’s only been in the last 18 to 24 months where there’s been a substantial shift into digital and to content again.”
The company said some of the initial customers in the U.S. include Artix Entertainment, Boomerang Networks, Gambit, gWallet, Merscom Games, OLX, Peanut Labs, Quepasa, Sometrics, Sonico, TheBroth, Viwawa, Viximo, and Wadja. The platform is called Allopass.
Preena said there’s a couple of benefits of its platform, most of which come from being a well-established company. He said they can cut merchants a check every ten days, rather than other competitors that may take a month or two. The other major advantage is that it offers more than mobile payments. In the U.S., Hi-media said it can offer mobile billing from the major U.S. operators, and also billing via 900-numbers and prepaid cards.
Preena said Hi-media has about 500 employees worldwide, and of that, 140 are in the payments business. “We have fairly aggressive growth plans in the U.S., Latin America and other parts of the world.” Right now, there’s six U.S. employees, which are backed up by a technical group in Europe. It also has customer service reps in three time zones that speak 11 languages. Prior to Hi-media’s expansion to the U.S. its mobile billing platform Allopass sales were up 10 percent in the third quarter 2009 to €21.3 million.
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