Conversational commerce

Conversational commerce is

During this time, in China, e-commerce via WeChat – at its core a messaging app, but also letting merchants display their goods in mobile Web pages and via social feeds – grew strongly. By 2013 e-commerce in China had overtaken that of the U.S.^[5]

Facebook Messenger

In 2016, Facebook announced its

In June 2017, Apple announced its Apple Business Chat^[11] product, allowing consumers and businesses to message each other via the Messages app.

WhatsApp

In September 2017

In March 2020, Podium announced a contactless payment solution^[18] allowing local businesses to accept payments through two-way SMS text message conversations with customers. Outside of traditional instore card-present transactions, there existed only a few options for businesses to accept payments, most of which were not secure, PCI compliant, or convenient. Through Podium Payments, businesses can engage with customers and securely close sales all within the same convenient channel.^[19]

Telegram

In May 2017 Telegram supported basic payments in chats using bots and in April 2021, the payment 2.0 that supports payment in more than 200 countries via integration with 9 different payment providers.^[20]

Alexa and Google Assistant

Both Amazon and Google are providing APIs to enable payment via voice chat using stored payment credentials in Google Pay or Amazon Pay.^{[21] [22]}

Web chat

Although, they do not have any functionalities to facilitate actual transactions within the conversation, companies like LiveChat Software, CM.com, and LivePerson have powered live conversations between customers and live agents as far back as the 2000s,^[23] before retail businesses used messaging apps to communicate with customers.

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