The standard online checkout experience has become inflated with friction. And while more companies build solutions around online checkout, few review it from scratch. Such a company is Onetextthat creates what he calls “Network of Text in Market” that allows buyers to complete purchases through text message.
The company, founded by former Paypal employees, just closed a $ 4.5 million round seed, supported by Khosla Ventures, Citi, Citi Ventures, Y Combinator, Good Friends (the Fund created by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds and Warby Parker, Harry’s) and Matt Bellamy, Muse’s frontman.
Co -founder and CEO Jonathan fudem He came with the idea while working in the checkout team on Paypal. There, he saw a lot of investors with Slick UX stumble over the same market obstacle: convincingly traders to exchange their existing payment flows.
“This is a hard step,” Fudem said, adding that many traders do not even have the freedom to choose their provider checkout. It is often decided by their e -commerce platform.
Using SMS, Onetext does not require a dealer to replace the existing checkout of his site. While large platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp also have e -commerce features, Fudem believes that brands still need immediate, authorized relationships with their customers.
Onetext considers itself as a competitor to SMS marketing companies known for mass, impersonal messages and spammy links.
Instead, it uses a combination of tools-including doubts with AI-powered conversations and people in the loop-to improve conversions by 20% to 30%. Characteristics such as basket recovery, post -purchase upgrades and buyer -related recommendations contribute significantly to this performance.
Underneath the hood, Onetext runs its own wallet, which is incorporated with the existing brand processor to complete the transactions. Onetext victims safely a customer’s payment details after his first purchase. Since then, they can rearrange with one answer.
This “Card-on-File” setting is what one believes Onetext makes its text trade similar to charging objects in a room during a hotel stay.
To do this project, Onetext uses what Fudem calls “consensual” automation. If a brand wants to charge a customer for a rearrangement, Onetext sends a text by saying that the payment will spend 24 hours unless the customer cancels. It is excellent by default.
Over time, it plans to expand the network so that buyers can use their vaulted profiles in multiple brands, with predetermined payment data and smarter recommendations.
In this sense, the company is built to something much larger: a sms-native SMS payment network.
“Building a wallet that sees consumers who are 10X better is really difficult,” Fudem said. “But we can create a platform for business text messages-consumer that brings the” charge to your room “experience only now, is your phone number. So we will build the network”.
Onetext passed Y Combinator in 2023 And quietly built her platform after the show. Today, the platform has medium -term e -commerce brands, making an annual revenue of $ 10 million to $ 100 million, as Fudem says, although it also supports smaller businesses and large businesses.
“We have escaped 3 times a year and make millions of revenue,” said Fudem, who started the company with CTO Daniel.
