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Will Payments via Messenger revolutionize the E-Commerce world?

#1

Sometimes a few well selected worlds are way more worth than a long description.

This is how this morning Facebook and its Messenger platform are aiming to give a big punch to the E-commerce industry. By enabling and trying out a Beta Version of payment via the Messenger platform, is Facebook willing to radically change the customer experience?

We can think so, yes. With this move, customers won’t have to go out from their conversational platform to make any purchase, reducing the steps for the vendors to close each deals to its minimal !

With the huge bots wave that is coming up (well, already on its way though… See Matt’s post or Adam’s one) and the AI that is shaping it slowly but surely (See IBM Watson’s functionality for example), we can definitely anticipate some major impacts of this new payment feature in a very short term !

Let’s see where this leads us !

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What's a bot you want to see someone build?
#2

I think that payments via Messenger could definitely change how people shop online.

The only thing I am currently skeptical when it comes to e-commerce via chatbots is the browsing experience. If I’m not completely sure what I’m looking for it may be easier to browse through a series of photos/images rather than chatting with a computer.

On the other hand - I expect we could see some incredibly unique use cases emerge for e-commerce via chatbots. For example, what if you could take a photo of a product, send it to a chatbot, and then it gives you a one click purchase option. That would be awesome.

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#3

Now that Facebook Messenger opened up their Payments API, I believe that it will open up new possibilities and advancements to the ‘one-click purchase’ payments. I’m excited to see how companies take advantage of this.

#4

Yes, Stefan, I am excited too. Opening up payments API for Messenger could really complete the picture for conversational commerce. I am working on a c-commerce (my term for conversational commerce) service for Whatsapp and Messenger and I have been thinking of a way to complete order fulfillments in-bot.

I am open for any ideas your excitement can birth…:slight_smile:

#5

Matt, I have imagined the conversational commerce (c-commerce, I call it!) procedure going a way like this:

  1. You start chatting with a bot about what you want, say, a pack of 6 beers.
  2. The bot sends you photos of a 6-beer pack of Bud, Heineken or Miller (this presents opportunities for sponsored products)
  3. You select which one you want and pay all withing the bot interface.

I agree that this may sound simple to say but not to do but at least it gives direction. Also ordering beers via a chatbot maybe one of the more simple tasks as compared to ordering a dress or something with so much detail.

Even so, in the case of the latter, lets not forget that one of the most common uses emerging for chat bots is search. With that said, a user could simply tell a bot to provide their best 10 results for the latest trending attires for the fall season and the bot could respond with either sponsored results or reviewed results from say Amazon or Macys. I believe users may develop a culture with bots where they will make decisions on the results bots return within micro moments and buy right within the bot.

my thoughts so far…tell me what you think

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#6

Matt,
I totally agree that image recognition such as the one from Facebook, IBM, or even the Reverser Image Search from Google, would be the natural next step in the shopping experience !
It will allow user to not even say the product, but just picture it or think of it to be able to buy it !

#7

I love the second part. That would be really awesome to have a chatbot with product scanning capabilities and delivers the best deal.

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#8

Those Image recognition tools have API, I think I am just gonna give it a try and build it :wink:

#9

Facebook already has your credit card information so payments via messenger is inevitable and secure too.Yes this will open up a new channel for buying products AND services, because Bots can deliver both. :slight_smile: