The services lets developers monetize their application or premium features inside the application via carrier billing. Users do not have to register or enter their credit-card information or insert a phone number – all that is needed is a single tap on the screen.

“The strategy is to enhance and expand the existing markets for mobile payments,” said Martin Koppel, CEO of Fortumo, Tallinn, Estonia. “So, virtual goods can be billed directly to the users’ mobile phones.

In-app payments
Fortumo provides a mobile payment platform for Internet entrepreneurs and application developers to monetize online games, social networks and mobile applications.

The service is available to all developers, regardless of size and location.

The company currently offers a mobile payments API service for developers and is looking at supporting in-application billing for Java and BlackBerry applications soon.

The service is available in 40 countries, such as France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, China and Indonesia.

The company expects that it will reach 50 countries by the end of 2010. It plans to launch in Latin American and Africa.

“Mobile applications have had a lot of traction lately, but unfortunately developers do not have good global options for monetization,” Mr. Koppel said. “For example in most of the European countries people cannot see paid apps in Android Market since the infrastructure isn’t ready.

“At the same time credit cards and PayPal aren’t really options in emerging markets,” he said. “Therefore, mobile payments that can be used everywhere is still the best global billing solution for virtual goods.

Mobile commerce
To use the service, developers can sign up and configure their service online at http://www.fortumo.com.

Additionally, the service includes downloadable Android libraries.
 
“In-app billing is a yet untapped frontier for mobile payments and takes some steps out of the process for users and developers,” he said. “Our target demographic is online games, social networks, mobile games and mobile applications developers, as well as different Web businesses that need monetization options.”

Here is a demo of the service: