Mobile Phone Payments Company Bango Signs Deal With Amazon

Very interesting, Bango. Sometimes the biggest deals are the ones where everyone is keeping mum. That seems to be the case with this little blip of news coming out of the mobile phone payments company Bango today. The company announced it has signed a deal with Amazon.com, Inc. to provide “services.” And yep, that’s just about all it’s saying.

Bango provided a short statement, noting that Amazon is now a Bango customer, which makes it the third major customer to sign up for the mobile payments platform. Previously, Bango signed deals with Research in Motion (RIM) and Opera, both of which involve offering carrier billing services for those companies’ app stores. (Carrier billing is the payment mechanism that allows users to pay for purchases on their mobile phone bills.) However, in Opera’s case, customers are able to use a credit card or carrier billing to purchase apps.

Bango won’t confirm any details of the new agreement, including how much the deal is worth or even what services, specifically, it will be providing to Amazon.

But the conclusion being drawn from the news, of course, is that Bango will soon be providing carrier billing services to Amazon for its app store, the Amazon App Store for Android, which is available to any Android user (in the U.S.) as an installable app. The Store is also now a prominent feature on the company’s new Android-based tablet, the Kindle Fire. What’s interesting, however, is that the Fire doesn’t come in a 3G version, which could entail a carrier relationship. It’s a Wi-Fi only device. Perhaps Bango’s news, then, hints at something yet to come?

Then again, given that Bango also provides analytics services, it could be something less exciting (to consumers, at least) than paying for apps via your phone bill.

According to a Bango spokesperson, the company couldn’t share any information beyond what it has already provided due to “commercial sensitivities.”

“This was very much just a regulatory announcement that Bango was required to release as it is a publicly quoted company. We hope to be able to release more information in 2012,” the spokesperson said.

The full statement reads as follows:

Bango (AIM: BGO) announces today that it has signed an agreement to provide services to Amazon. The terms of this agreement are not being disclosed. The Board believes it is too early in the relationship to accurately forecast the level of business which it may generate.