The Asian telecoms group SingTel has announced a partnership with Boku to launch direct carrier billing in Singapore. The new service will enable SingTel's postpaid subscribers in Singapore to pay for mobile purchases directly from participating merchants via their mobile phone billing account.

In October, San Francisco-based Boku opened offices in Singapore, Sydney, Australia, and Tokyo as part of a move to roll out its direct carrier billing and mobile payments platform in Asia.

SingTel plans to roll out Boku's direct carrier billing technology to other regional carriers within the SingTel group, including Optus (Australia), Telkomsel (Indonesia), AIS (Thailand) and Globe (Philippines).

SingTel's direct billing API (applications programming interface) offers features such as notification of billing errors to consumers; continuous pricing enabling merchants to create a wide range of price points and free promotions; and recurring billing for merchants with subscription based services.

"With SingTel, we are connecting to a global carrier that supports advanced features such as multiple country connection, direct user authorization, continuous pricing and streamlined refund capabilities," Kurt Davis, Boku's Asian general manager, said in a statement. "This partnership gives us the ability to offer our merchant partners carrier billing functionality across the entire Southeast Asia region."

In November, Boku bought Qubecell, one of India's leading direct carrier billers.

Learn more about direct carrier billing.