Bango has just moved into its new offices at Cambridge Business Park, a site off Cowley Road in the north part of Cambridge owned by the Crown Estate.
The move wasn’t far – Bango had spent the last four years at Cambridge Science Park – but finding the right spot took longer than they thought, says CEO Paul Larbey.
“We moved from what was set up four years ago as a temporary office on Cambridge Science Park,” Paul explains, adding “it turned out to be temporary for far longer than we expected.”
The reason behind that delay, he says, is that offers for four other sites fell through.
“With two of them, the deal collapsed on completion day,” he points out.
So now Bango has a fresh HQ to go with its offices in Japan, the US, Italy and Germany.
“We just moved in yesterday so it’s day one,” he says with a smile. “Everything’s up and running now; over the past 16 weeks there’s been lots of refitting and it’s turned into a lovely space to bring people together to create – there really is nothing like people arguing over who gets the whiteboard pen to spark ideas.”
Innovation is key here, but Bango’s setup also helps their customers innovate too – thanks to their Digital Vending Machine (DVM), which launched back in 2020.
DVM unlocks streaming and gaming potential by letting companies bundle and manage different subscription services easily across various channels.
Began in 1999 as pioneers of mobile payments, Bango now supports giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft in reaching paying users worldwide. Their tech links content providers like Netflix, Spotify, You Tube, Disney and Apple with telcos including mobile networks and ISPs-basically powering one of the biggest subscription bundling systems globally-giving people access to what they want how they want it.
The company even won a King’s Award for Innovation last year (2023).
This year saw DVM take another leap forward with its all-in-one Super Bundling technology-the first of its kind-which lets any business create and run complex multi-product bundles for consumers.
It’s paying off: earlier this month Bango shared an update showing a 21% jump in annual recurring revenue hitting £15.6 million for H1 of 2025 plus strong EBITDA growth. They signed seven new deals during that time too-showing real momentum for their DVM platform.
“DVM now handles more than 20 million active subscriptions,” says Paul, “and we’ve announced seven deals so far this year-it’s picking up pace-we see it growing into hundreds of millions [of subscriptions] so we’re really excited.”
“Our clients include six out of eight major telcos in the US; we just added Korea’s largest operator alongside those in Japan and Europe.”
“Now we’re focusing on bringing more telcos onboard and growing with retailers too-we recently partnered with Disney+ in Portugal-as well as banks, financial services firms and employee benefit schemes.. We’re pretty open about who we work with.”
You might wonder how AI fits into digital payments?
“AI is an awesome opportunity-we use it mainly to boost productivity.”
“One challenge is if you need people to scale your business that’s fine but hiring can be tough right now-and because we handle loads of subscriptions worldwide we’re looking at using AI plus language prompts to improve both consumer experience and channel interactions,”
“That means using natural language more-now that many more consumers have subscriptions AI can automatically suggest different options or services integrated right into their experience.”
“Some team members are experts but we want everyone involved; still no dedicated AI team per se.”
BANGO – shortlisted this year for both Large Business of The Year AND Innovation awards at Cambridge Independent Awards – is listed AIM publicly now; will that change soon?
“AIM isn’t where we’ll stay forever but exactly where we’ll end up isn’t clear yet either. UK markets need some changes structurally so more companies can come public since valuations are tricky right now. Money flows out currently, bond yields rise, liquidity is tight-but eventually that’ll sort itself out; it’s gotta.”
“We think we’d do better trading stateside but we’re still too small there. So we’ve gotta grow first. We recapitalised earlier this year which let us keep developing. We’re well funded already so no rush raising money; revenue growth goes straight through since our profits rise along.”
“Organic growth is enough for us now; focus shifts fully onto execution-and we’re unique because we help folks trying build their own telco businesses.”
“Everything seems to be falling into place right when it should.”
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