Credit: https://developer.apple.com/business-chat/
Apple is shaking it up a little by adding something cool to iMessage. By launching Business Chat, the Cupertino-based tech giant is trying to catch up with Facebook’s popular chat app, Messenger.
Business Chat is a new feature that has been integrated into iMessage to make the app attractive to businesses. With the new feature, businesses can communicate and do a few other things that they were unable to do before now.
“Business Chat is a powerful new way for businesses to connect with customers directly in Messages. Using Business Chat, your customers can get answers to questions, resolve issues, and complete transactions on their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Customers can find your business and start conversations from Safari, Maps, Spotlight, and Siri,” a message from Apple read.
Recall that Facebook Messenger boasts a couple of features aimed at simplifying the process of doing business on the app. Messenger recently integrated PayPal payment into the app. The new feature allows select users in the U.S [more users and countries could soon follow] to easily link their PayPal and Messenger accounts. Users will also be able to receive payment alerts directly within the Messenger app.
Last September, Facebook announced that its 30,000 bots can now accept payments natively without directing you to third-party websites. That move signified the company’s intention to move into the mainstream of offering businesses opportunity to close transactions without being redirected to a third-party website.
Apple’s main objective with Business Chat is clear; to enable businesses add some of their app features within a chat. The new feature will also be integrated with other customer service, with a couple of partners already listed as pioneers. Some of the high-profile businesses [partners] that have been penciled down as pioneers include, Salesforce, Genesys, LivePerson, and Nuance, Apple said.
Last October, Shopify stepped up its game when it started offering merchants big opportunity to make direct sales in Messenger. This move made the company one of the early birds to enable direct conversation between stores and customers via the popular Messenger; and now it has integrated a new way to help merchants make direct sales in the chat app.
Speaking further on the collaboration [partnership with Facebook], Ready said: “This collaboration continues to showcase our march to be a customer champion. We will continue to execute on our vision of offering PayPal in more places where people shop online, in app and in store by partnering with companies who share our desire to create meaningful products that benefit both consumers and merchants.”
Last week, Apple announced that it would integrate Apple Pay into iMessage as an app, which will basically allow you to request payment with your contact with a single tap. Most importantly, the new feature will show up a notification when someone says “you owe me $10” and will automatically prompt you to pay your debt.
Integrating Apple Pay into iMessage will come as a big competition for Venmo; a company that has been offering similar service to users of the chat app for a while now. However, Apple seems to have the upper hand considering the fact that it owns iMessage as well as Apple Pay.
