Chat and messaging platforms are becoming more than just a convenient way to communicate. They are emerging as a business driver, offering privacy, security and transactional support at scale.

The Brazilian mobile payments platform PicPay is an example of how this new dynamic is reshaping communication between a business and its customers. Digital banking is booming across Latin America, and PicPay has emerged as a key fintech player. The company saw its active user base grow to 36 million in March and then reach 60 million in November.

PicPay became a customer of Sendbird Inc. after coming to the realization that it needed to embrace a chat platform that could propel its business model. Payments are turning into conversations.

“The world became more private, and as soon as we understood this situation we decided to move from a public feed to a private interaction,” said Luiz Fernando Diniz (pictured, right), vice president of PicPay Social. “Everybody was sending money to a friend, requesting or charging their family. They need to find the one they want to pay and then they can chat and conclude the payment. We put together the chat platform with the payment platform.”

Diniz spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier during the AWS Startup Showcase “MarTech Emerging Cloud-Scale Customer Experiences” event, an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by John Kim (pictured, left), co-founder and chief executive officer of Sendbird, and they discussed how Sendbird’s platform helped PicPay drive customer engagement and generate more transactional value. (* Disclosure below.)

Providing messaging expertise

Sendbird’s solution involves an in-app messaging capability designed to improve the impersonal experience of email and text messaging and control the identity risks associated with communication via legacy SMS platforms. The issue that Kim and his co-founders identified was that the vast majority of businesses, such as PicPay, could not spend resources to build a custom frictionless, modern experience in messaging applications.

“We want to help the 99.9% of businesses around the world who don’t have the technology or user experience expertise in messaging,” Kim explained. “We help our customers harness the power of modern messaging capabilities and embed it into their own platforms so they can retain their users and engage with them in the context of what their business is about.”

PicPay recognized the importance of being able to facilitate conversations during a transactional process. The exchange of payment between two people can be equal parts social and business. PicPay owned only half of this equation.

“We are not a chat platform, so we are going to use social interaction to improve the payment platform that we have,” Diniz said. “Our first step was to connect all of the users between themselves through payments. The second step we are providing now is using the Sendbird platform for PicPay to provide the best information and a better customer experience.”

Higher level of trust

The effectiveness of a messaging platform that engages the user can be seen in a number of customer use cases. When one PicPay user purchased items at a craft fair, he received a private follow-up message from the seller offering other items from the collection. More business resulted from this simple exchange.

“When you are making transactions, there is a higher trust and people tend to engage far better on platforms through these kinds of private conversations,” Kim said. “How businesses and users interact with each other is all happening through digital conversations, and we’re seeing more of that through the lifecycle of our company.”

For PicPay, the integration of messaging with payments is getting results. The Brazilian fintech company has found that socially active users create double the transactions versus others and are 2.4 times more likely to continue accessing services on the platform.

“Their average spend is three times higher too.” Diniz noted. “They are making more connections, so the network effect is stronger.”

The results from PicPay validate Sendbird’s belief that by paying closer attention to social engagement through a robust, integrated private messaging platform, businesses can cultivate a positive customer response.

“Support is becoming more real time through chat; you’re actually building a relationship,” Kim said. “We do believe that it’s the future of the business and how more brands will be building relationships with their customers.”

Watch the complete video interview below, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Startup Showcase “MarTech Emerging Cloud-Scale Customer Experiences” event:

(* Disclosure: Sendbird Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Sendbird nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE