Bango, provider of direct-to-bill mobile payment services, has raised £6.5m through the placement of 3.3m new shares on the stock market.

Bango says it will use the funds to finance further development of the business, with a particular eye on gaining more MNO partners – the company signed up Telefónica in January – as well as developing business opportunities in emerging markets.

“We believe emerging markets represent an exciting growth opportunity for us, and are seeing increasing interest from key customers in these areas, in particular in Brazil, Latin America, India and other parts of Asia,” said Bango CEO Ray Anderson. “This fundraise provides us with the resources to move forward in developing those opportunities and we are confident that the massively smooth user experiences enabled by our unique technology platform, extensive mobile network operator relationships and industry leading customers provide us with a clear competitive edge in the fast growing mobile payments industry.”

According to Bango, the reach of its mobile payments platform now exceeds 1bn users – though presumably this number is just reflective of the number of potential users, bolstered by Facebooks sizeable mobile audience and Telefónica subscribers.