The standard on-line checkout expertise has turn out to be bloated with friction. And whereas extra corporations are constructing options round on-line checkout, few are rethinking it from scratch. One such firm is OneText, which is constructing what it calls a “text-to-buy community,” that lets consumers full purchases through textual content message.
The corporate, based by former PayPal staff, simply closed a $4.5 million seed spherical backed by Khosla Ventures, Coatue, Citi Ventures, Y Combinator, Good Mates (the fund created by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds, and Harry’s), and Matt Bellamy, the frontman of Muse.
Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Fudem got here up with the concept whereas engaged on the checkout crew at PayPal. There, he noticed many upstarts with slick UX stumble over the identical go-to-market hurdle: convincing retailers to swap out their present cost flows.
“That’s a tough pitch,” Fudem stated, including that many retailers don’t even have the liberty to decide on their checkout supplier; it’s usually determined by their e-commerce platform.
Through the use of SMS, OneText doesn’t require a service provider to interchange their web site’s present checkout. Whereas massive platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp even have ecommerce options, Fudem believes manufacturers nonetheless want direct, ownable relationships with their prospects.
OneText views itself as a competitor to the SMS advertising and marketing corporations recognized for mass, impersonal messaging and spammy hyperlinks.
As an alternative, it makes use of a mixture of instruments — together with AI-powered two-way conversations and people within the loop — to enhance conversions by 20–30%. Options like cart restoration, post-purchase upsells, and shopper-specific suggestions contribute meaningfully to that efficiency.
Below the hood, OneText runs its personal pockets which integrates with a model’s present processor to finish transactions. OneText securely vaults a buyer’s cost data after their first buy. From then on, they’ll reorder with a single reply.
This “card-on-file” setup is what OneText believes makes its textual content commerce just like charging gadgets to a room throughout a lodge keep.
To make that work, OneText makes use of what Fudem calls “consentful” automation. If a model needs to cost a buyer for a reorder, OneText sends a textual content saying the cost will undergo in 24 hours until the client cancels. It’s opt-out by default.
Over time, it plans to increase the community so consumers can use their vaulted profiles throughout a number of manufacturers, with pre-filled checkout knowledge and smarter suggestions.
In that sense, the corporate is constructing towards one thing a lot bigger: a cross-brand, SMS-native cost community.
“Constructing a consumer-facing pockets that’s 10x higher is basically laborious,” Fudem stated. “However we will create a business-to-consumer texting platform that brings the ‘cost it to your room’ expertise, solely now, it’s your telephone quantity. That’s how we’ll construct the community.”
OneText went via Y Combinator in 2023 and quietly constructed out its platform after Demo Day. At present, the platform has mid-sized e-commerce manufacturers, doing $10M–$100M in annual income, as prospects, Fudem says, although it additionally helps smaller startups and enormous enterprises.
“We’ve been scaling 3x 12 months over 12 months and doing tens of millions in income,” stated Fudem, who launched the corporate with CTO Daniel Mind.
