Clickatell and Visa’s Cybersource deliver “Chat 2 Pay”

By Edlyn Cardoza

Clickatell, a leader in mobile communications and chat commerce, and Visa’s global payment and fraud management platform, Cybersource, announced a partnership to make it easier for businesses to deliver chat commerce and contact-free checkouts with Clickatell’s newly announced Chat 2 Pay solution. Chat 2 Pay is a simple and comprehensive way for businesses to offer payments and transactions to consumers in chat.

This 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.”

“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 favorite chat apps,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and co-founder, Clickatell. “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.”

Clickatell’s new Chat 2 Pay solution creates greater freedom and convenience in the payment process. Now, consumers can ask a retailer to send a payment request, make the payment, and receive acknowledgement, all from chat channels on a mobile device. Chat 2 Pay additionally meets the needs of sellers and shoppers who expect the convenience of their already trusted and favourite chat apps to converse and transact with businesses.

In today’s environment, consumers are increasingly looking for contactless digital engagement options and longer term, these solutions also meet the desire for greater consumer convenience and payment choices. The contactless payment market is expected to reach $52 billion by 2027, up from $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.