BOKU, a San Fransico-based global mobile payments company, announced June 16 that it is acquring two competitors and has secured £8 million pounds in venture funding in a round led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from UK-based Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

BOKU has acquired Paymo, based in San Francisco and Mobillcash, which was originally founded in Britain, two leading mobile payments companies with a global reach of over 1.6 billion customers in 53 countries.

The market for online payments via mobile is being driven by the rapid, global growth of social networks, virtual goods and games, the popularity of mobile applications, and the large number of unbanked customers who have access to mobile phones, but not credit cards or bank accounts.  The gap between the banked and underbanked is large, with 4 billion mobile phones but only 2 billion bank accounts worldwide.