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Soon, bill payments through Twitter
28 Dec 2015
  • Twitter users in India may soon be able to pay bills though the micro-blogging site, Techcrunch reported.
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  • The company has announced a partnership with India-based startup Lookup to enable users to send a direct message to @lookuplite in order to book appointments, inquire about services and make transactions with businesses, the report said.
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  • Lookup lets retailers and consumers chat with each other through direct messaging. It boasts of 1.2 million registered users despite listing merchants from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
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  • Currently, users can buy directly within the social network thorough Twitter's 'Buy' button.
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  • In the new arrangement, orders and payments would be fulfilled separately and offline with Twitter simply facilitating the conversation. Lookup will use Twitter's API, as well as its monitoring capabilities, to handle connecting the customer to the prospective merchant, according to the report.
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  • Instead of connecting users through phone numbers, Lookup instead uses Google Maps to give users a view of all the retailers in their area.
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  • “Basically we act like a I want it right now button,” Lookup founder and CEO Deepak Ravindran told TechCrunch. There have been orders for high-end goods like iPads and Fibits but “most of the enquiries however are on low price orders under $5-10.”
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  • Ravindran added that the company is investigating other channel partnerships.
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  • “Machines will outsmart humans in the future but it will take time. We want to win in India (and) here is (our) chance. We want to reach to every channel to grow users and ultimately become the Google for offline,” he said.

 

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