Legimi Taps Fortumo to lunch direct carrier billing in Poland

Polish e-book vendor Legimi and the mobile technology company Fortumo are launching a direct carrier billing partnership.

Through Fortumo’s PayRead solution, users can now subscribe to Legimi and access thousands of e-books and audiobooks by charging the payments to their phone bill. The option to pay with carrier billing is available to more than 18 million subscribers of the mobile operators Orange and Plus.

“Instant access, convenient payment. This is a must for a fast growing and ambitious digital entertainment company. That is why we decided to cooperate with Fortumo. The simplicity of implementation was also important, as it did not require significant involvement of the resources of our IT team,” said Mikołaj Małaczyński, CEO at Legimi.

“Carrier billing is the leading alternative payment method used by global app stores, game developers and streaming services. Fortumo’s PayRead gives digital publishers the simplest way to adopt the payment method when transitioning from an ad-based model to a reader revenue model. We are excited to be working with Legimi and helping support their user acquisition and revenue growth goals,” added Andrea Boetti, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Fortumo.

Legimi collects carrier billing payments from users in Poland through Fortumo’s Unified SDK product. Through Unified SDK, one integration connects Legimi to telcos in Poland and gives access to a network of more than 300 other mobile operators and digital wallets. Fortumo hosts and localizes Unified SDK checkout flows on its platform, making it simple and scalable for merchants to launch local payment methods across the world. Legimi additionally users Fortumo’s Subscription Engine for full user lifecycle management of users acquired through carrier billing.

In Poland, credit card ownership is only 16% while 64% of people have a smartphone. This creates a challenge for digital content merchants in the country: while most people are able to access digital content, the majority of people are unable to pay for premium services. Carrier billing solves this problem by letting any user charge purchases to their mobile phone bill. Additional data on the digital ecosystem of Poland and other countries in the Central & Eastern European (CEE) region can be found from Fortumo’s CEE market report.

In recent news, Fortumo announced a carrier billing partnership with the cloud gaming service Antstream in Poland.

Legimi S.A. is a precursor and leader in Polish market of subscription access to digital books. The company, often called “Spotify for e-books”, has been providing www.legimi.pl since 2012, offering ebooks also in cooperation with the largest Polish mobile operators.