The stars have aligned for phone financing company Glow Services following a $65 million investment round which included cable pioneer John Malone as well as a fresh deal with Verizon.

Last month, Liberty Global chair Malone pitched in $10 million into the equity funding round through his investment company Silver Spur Capital while Apollo Global Management kicked in $35 million and Citi Group laid out $15 million to bring Glow Services’ valuation to $325 million.

“That is a big vote of confidence,” Glow Services executive chair Andrew Cole (pictured) told Mobile World Live. “These companies believe we can help really drive change in the market.”

Cole said five members of the company’s board of advisors also took part in the funding. Glow’s advisory board includes industry heavyweights such as former Telefonica president and CEO Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, Ronan Dunne, Gavin Patterson, Glenn Lurie, Nick Jan Van Damme, Eelco Blok and Mats Granryd.

The company, founded in 2014 by Cole and CEO Christiaan Ross, provides three platforms for mobile operators.

The first, and biggest, is its FinTech platform which provides phone financing for telecoms companies such as BT Group, Samsung and Bell. Cole said in addition to Verizon last month, the company has several other deals pending with large operators.

Glow Services offers mobile operator customers loans at the point of sale through its financing platform.

“Our tech helps telcos sell more phones,” Cole said. “And if you sell more phones, you add more airtime, and therefore you have market share. So, it’s a really big deal.”

In phone sales, airtime refers to the service credit which allows a mobile phone user to make voice calls, send text messages and use mobile data on a wireless network.

The loans, which are backed by Apollo, provide mobile operator customers more financing options while reducing the amount of debt held by service providers.

The programme enables mobile operators to offer phone deals at a cheaper rate than their rivals, Cole said.

In addition, Cole stated mobile operators in some countries can only offer two-year loan programmes while Glow Services can do three-to-four years since it is an independent third party.

“In those cases, we offer a three or four-year loan and the loan becomes the churn reducer,” he explained. “It’s a beautiful user experience and NPS is 80 plus generally.”

The company’s GreenTech platform is a device trading and upgrade programme while InsureTech provides insurance.

All three platforms use APIs to tie into operators’ networks.

“Two APIs is the minimum,” Cole said. “And that’s what often was done, particularly out of the gate. It can go up to a maximum of eight APIs, depending on how much back and forth they want between us and them.”

Cole stated local insurance regulations are embedded across its platforms.

“We basically provide our tech to the telco with our insurance licence and that’s all they need. It means another 20 per cent to 30 per cent cost reduction and profit improvement.”

About Glow
Glow Services competes against companies such as Asurion, Assurance Wireless and SquareTrade, but unlike some of its rivals Cole noted it is a telecom industry focused tech company.

Cole stated the $65 million round is the first raise for Glow Services. He noted the company has grown 100 per cent over the past several years because “what we do affects the telco’s core business”.

The company has 200 employees, with plans to add another 100 as it expands into more European countries, Japan and South Korea. Currently, Glow Services’ footprint covers the UK, North America and Australia.

“We can add the tech, particularly with the AI enablement, which means we’ll probably add 100 more, but it’s not like we need massive amounts of people,” Cole said.