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Sporting Challenges (UK), the providers of football half time entertainment Strike the Bar has selected mobile payment specialists paythru to handle its online payments for its prize draw, which gives supporters the opportunity to win a magnificent £100,000 by hitting the cross bar with a kick from the half-way line.

Supporters enter a prize draw to win the chance to take the half time kick at their team’s home games.  Supporters can enter the prize draw on the web, by SMS and soon via iPhone and iPad apps.  Strike the bar will soon be joined by Strike the Stump and Strike the Post for cricket and rugby – paythru will also handle the online payments for these when launched!

Commenting on the choice of paythru, Clive Richardson, managing director, Sporting Challenges (UK) Ltd says: “Supporters can enter our competitions through multiple channels so it was important that our online payment partner had the capacity to expand into the mobile app channel when we launch it.  We are all about providing supporters with the opportunity to have fun and win a huge amount of money, so the payment process needs to be as secure and smooth as possible so as not to get in the way of the fun. paythru does this perfectly.”

Keith Brown, managing director, paythru, added: “As a huge football fan I was delighted when we started working with Sporting Challenges (UK).  We are finding a growing demand for a payment service that works across all digital channels as clients move from web to mobile or mobile apps.  We’re well placed to meet this demand for multi-channel payment services and look forward to working on Strike the Stump and Strike the Post when they are launched.”

ends

Notes to editors:

paythru (www.paythru.com) is a mobile payment specialist that provides companies with a new sales channel allowing consumers to purchase what they want, when they want, where they want through their mobile phones.

paythru is confident that m-commerce will shortly  reach its tipping point with mass adoption being driven by the ‘all you can eat’ data packages available from all mobile service providers, 3G access and new handsets delivering browsing speeds close to that of fixed line access.  The impact of these developments can be seen in statistics from Buzz City (February 2009) with 87 per cent of users accessing the mobile internet more than once a day and 50 per cent accessing it more than five times a day.

Sporting Challenges (UK) Ltd is the home of half time entertainment events at football clubs up and down the UK. Sporting Challenges (UK) Ltd also operate entertainment at Cricket and Rugby in the UK and will soon be operating Strike the Bar and other events in Europe and Africa.

For more information please contact:

Kate Hartley

Carrot Communications

Tel: 020 7903 5103 or 0771 406 5233

kate.hartley@carrotcomms.co.uk

@katehartley