Recently (about 2 months ago), chat app Viber stepped into the field of bots and released their own bot platform to connect businesses with customers on their platform. And while we’ve already started to build a very first Viber bot for one of our clients they are going further and announcing a new in-chat “Instant shopping” feature that lets users search for goods without leaving Viber.

The launch will include Rakuten.com — the ecommerce marketplace formerly known as Buy.com, which was acquired by Japanese tech titan Rakuten in 2010. You may remember that Rakuten has been the owner of Viber since its $900 million acquisition in 2014, so this sheds some light on how Rakuten is looking to cross-pollinate its services.

Great move into a growing push to connect companies with consumers. Now, with in-chat shopping, another piece of Viber’s monetization puzzle is in place.

https://goo.gl/wUVVDe