Pioneering Bristol mobile businesses Mubaloo and Creditcall have been named among the UK’s 50 most innovative firms in the fast-growing sector.
It is the third consecutive year that mobile consultancy and app developer Mubaloo has appeared in the annual Mobile Entertainment Top 50 Innovators list. For online and mobile payment specialist Creditcall, recognition in the prestigious table comes shortly after it was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade. 
The Top 50 Mobile Innovators project was launched in 2011 to celebrate the most creative and successful firms in the UK mobile sector. The list recognises trailblazers in areas such as apps, gaming, loyalty, ticketing, payments, advertising and education.
The vast majority of businesses are London-based. Bristol is the only provincial city to have two firms in the list – testament to its burgeoning tech industry.
Enterprise app specialist Mubaloo’s hat-trick of appearances in the table is based on the launch over the past year of sister businesses The Responsive Web company (TRW) and MiBeacons, hatched from a research and development project that spotted the opportunity for using BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacon technology.
Mubaloo founder and CEO, serial entrepreneur Mark Mason, said: “The launch of our MiBeacons division earlier this year was instrumental to being recognised again in these awards. 
“The technology’s location-based targeting is helping close the gap between online and real-world interactions between brands and their consumers.
“We are helping companies to make huge improvements to how employees and customers interact with their businesses. It’s great to see more innovation coming out of Bristol. More needs to be done to show how much talent there is here.”
Fast-growing firm Mubaloo, now one of Europe’s top developers, has this year also won a deal with Haymarket Media Group to create over 12 apps and also improved the speed at which London’s Air Ambulance can respond to emergencies.
Creditcall’s innovation has made it a lead operator in the online and mobile payments market in the UK, US and Canada in areas such as vending and parking. It also recently launched in Australia.
Its technology, which provides a secure gateway for card payments, is used by major operators such as parking giant Apcoa. The firm averaged growth of around 30% for the past three years and has doubled its headcount to 63 over the past two years.
CEO Peter Turner said: “Being recognised as a mobile innovator is a great achievement. Mobile has been one of the biggest catalysts for change over the past 10 years. It has become the new battleground for innovation and opportunity.
“We recognised this back in 2000 and focused on how best to exploit mobile for innovations in payments. Since then we exported the payments solution to North America and Europe and have recently been awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade in recognition of this success.”
Firms making up the Mobile Entertainment Top 50 Innovators list were assessed by a panel of judges made up of venture capitalists, analysts and entrepreneurs.
