Feb. 5, 2019

Docomo Digital is launching its mobile gaming platform with Zain Iraq, which gives more than 16 million subscribers the ability to access hundreds of titles using direct carrier billing on monthly phone bills, according to a press release.

Zain Games' GamEmpire is a bundle of native and HTML5 games that can be streamed directly to mobile phones or tablets.

Docomo Digital and Zain, a leading mobile operator in the Middle East and Africa, signed the initial agreement in early 2018 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The partnership allows Zain's 46.9 million customers to access mobile content from Docomo and have it billed monthly through the carrier.

Zain, which operates in eight countries in the region, has already launched the service in Saudi Arabia,  Kuwait and Jordan. Additional rollouts are scheduled for Bahrain and Lebanon over the next few months.

"Launching our games platform in Iraq marks yet another important milestone in our important partnership with the Zain Group, and our first such partnership in Iraq," Hiroyuki Sato, Docomo Digital CEO, said in the release. "We are committed to expanding our footprint across the Middle East and we hope to bring our latest suite of content and billing services to Zain's subscribers across the region."

London-based Docomo Digital is a unit of Japanese telecom operator NTT Docomo.

Topics: Direct Carrier Billing, Region: EMEA

Companies: NTT Docomo Inc.

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Feb. 4, 2019

Better Mortgage, one of the nation's largest digital lenders, has raised $70 million in Series C funds led by American Express and the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan.

Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Goldman Sachs and Pine Brook, who led the company's $15 million Series B round in 2017, also participated in the round, according to a press release. The company will use the investment to support its technology platform and continued growth, including the addition of partnership channels and to hiring employees.

"Buying a home is one of the biggest financial life events that our customers experience, but the process is often full of pain points," Lindsay Fitzgerald, managing director, Amex Ventures, said in the release. "By building a mortgage platform to be fully digital from the ground up, Better Mortgage has reduced the complexity around the home buying process."

The company has funded more than $2 billion in loans since it launched in 2016, with 7,000 customers being able to refinance.

The company expanded its service last week to four more states, including Alaska, Oklahoma, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Topics: Financial News, Mobile Banking

Companies: Better Mortgage Corporation

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Feb. 4, 2019

Restaurant digital orders have grown an average of 23 percent, per year since 2013, and will triple by the end of 2020, according to a report from NPD Group.

The report, called Delivering Digital Convenience, found that 70 percent of a restaurant's digital orders come through its mobile app or its website, with the remaining orders coming through third-party apps or websites. Customers used the restaurant's own app most of the time because of rewards points or savings, and other brands appeal to customers because they want to create a custom order or take friction out of the ordering process.

Third-party apps like DoorDash, UberEats or Grubhub/Seamless accounted for 40 percent share of the 20 most used apps, and are used by consumers who want to look up various food items and check prices.  

"Digital orders will remain an outsized source of growth for the restaurant industry over the next few years, and operators who desire to grow need to embrace a digital strategy," said David Portalatin, NPD food industry adviser and author of Eating Patterns in America, said in the announcement. "There are clear leaders in the digital ordering space, and third-party providers who have achieved critical mass the fastest."

Topics: In-App Payments, Loyalty Programs, Mobile Apps, Mobile Payments, Restaurants

Companies: Grubhub, The NPD Group, Inc., Uber Eats, DoorDash

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