Mobile communications and chat commerce venture Clickatell has entered into a partnership with Visa’s global payment and fraud management platform Cybersource to reinforce the roll out of the recently introduced Chat 2 Pay solution.

Chat 2 Pay is a means by which businesses can offer payments and transactions to consumers in chat. It enables merchants to securely accept payments in chat messaging by sending consumers a payment link via SMS or WhatsApp.

In its design of Chat 2 Pay, Clickatell claims it has efficiently orchestrated the complex relationship between messaging, payments, or the order management system (OMS) of their customers, and in the process mitigates the risk of merchants managing payment card details.

Clickatell says its own data shows using the chat channel for interactions and transactions reduces the overall cost of doing business while increasing customer engagement.

Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell.

“Brands can now improve their customer service with Chat 2 Pay by providing a more convenient and secure way to make payments in chat messaging,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell. “Chat 2 Pay addresses today’s boom worldwide in digital payments – a shift in consumer behaviour and response to the impact of the pandemic. It also helps address consumers’ physical proximity concerns, while reducing fraud. Chat 2 Pay delivers a secure, frictionless, and contact free checkout - with no need to hand credit cards to merchants or read card details over the phone.”

The Visa partnership is expected to make it easier for businesses to deliver chat commerce and contact-free checkouts.

According to information from Clickatell, the partnership will allow Cybersource to deploy Chat 2 Pay with a pay-by-link capability that allows businesses to provide consumers the convenience of effortless, contact-free payments via text messaging and chat channels on mobile phones, including widely used chat apps.

“Partnering with Clickatell allows us to expand our ability to offer new contactless, interactive technology to our ecosystem,” said Carleigh Jaques, senior vice president and general manager, Cybersource. “Chat 2 Pay complements our own capabilities and makes it easier for our clients to serve their customers in the places where they are already messaging and chatting, quickly and securely.”

De Villiers added: “This partnership brings together Cybersource’s focus on convenient, secure payments with Clickatell’s mission to spread chat commerce to the masses, enabling consumers to interact and transact from their favourite chat apps. Billions of consumers are on chat, and commerce and payments will increasingly follow. Together, Clickatell and Cybersource will enable greater chat commerce and consumer convenience. We’re very excited to partner closely with Cybersource in this endeavour.”

According to Clickatell, the contactless payment market is expected to reach US$52-billion by 2027, up from US$12-billion in 2019, and in the United States there are more than 370 million tap-to-pay-enabled Visa cards.

Cybersource and Clickatell are bringing Chat 2 Pay to merchants and partners in 190 countries.