Further evidence of the opportunities offered by changing user behaviour comes from South Africa, where integrated communications company Telkom’s millions of customers can now make payments in WhatsApp, thanks to a deal with Clickatell.
Clickatell, which describes itself as the chat commerce and business messaging leader, has launched its Chat 2 Pay feature for Telkom. Telkom now deploys to its customers the Chat 2 Pay pay-by-link capability in WhatsApp, providing them with the convenience of safe and effortless mobile payments.Telkom's post-paid and prepaid customers can pay their phone and xDSL/fibre bills, and buy airtime, data and SMS bundles by simply sending the message “Hi” on WhatsApp to a specific number.
Currently, Telkom’s chatbot offers customers mobile support by accessing their accounts and billing information. It also allows them to view sales deals, check for mobile or fibre upgrades, do cancellations, make directory inquiries and more. With the addition of Chat 2 Pay, customers benefit from a convenient and personalised service to pay bills and VAS top-ups via Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards.
With Chat 2 Pay, Telkom customers can transact by simply making a menu selection to trigger a payment request. A link is then sent to the customer in a WhatsApp message. When they click on the link, they access a fully hosted checkout page. The customer can then securely enter payment details and submit, receiving a confirmation of the payment and receipt in a chat message.
