Now, a social commerce Sellfie from Citrus

Contextual commerce is slowly emerging as the future of shopping. Imagine an app that allows users to take a picture of an item, price it, choose shipping options, and push a link to multiple platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to both sell the item and collect payments.

Citrus Payments recently launched Sellfie, a contextual commerce startup that enables individuals and small businesses to sell and collect payments on social networks and instant messengers using buy buttons, payment links, and chat bots.

“Contextual Commerce is the new frontier for commerce and it is growing rapidly. With Sellfie, we will be able to offer a complete commerce solution to help individuals and small businesses sell on social networks and instant messengers,” says Amrish Rau, Managing Director, Citrus Payments.

He adds that apart from enabling sellers to post and collect payments on multiple social networks using buy buttons and payment links, the app also lets sellers chat with buyers and complete the orders received from multiple channels, all in one place. Addressing the need for both buyer and seller comfort, Sellfie is designed so sellers can collect payments anywhere by creating a unique payment link. Besides, Sellfie’s model of escrow payments or “buyer protection guarantee” ensures that payments made will be released into the seller’s account only when the buyer receives the product.

Anish Achuthan, Business Head, Sellfie, adds that it aims to provide the platform to more than one million individuals and small business in three years. “We have invested time and effort in the product to ensure that everything from the user interface to the payment process is simple, easy, and organised. The idea is to help individuals capture businesses within their niche with zero commissions.”

Citrus Payments is a financial technology company that provides payment gateway and wallet services to over 10,000+ merchants and 21 million users, processing close to $3 billion in annual transactions.

Given Citrus Payments’ significant user base, Sellfie may soon become the preferred choice for many small business owners.

In the trillion dollar e-commerce market worldwide, contextual commerce aims to give a fillip. Many platforms are already showing interest and introducing their products in the market on this platform.

In February 2016, PayPal unveiled the new PayPal Commerce, a contextual commerce platform that enables merchants and partners to embed “buy” buttons into blogs, social feeds, email, apps, and ads through a set of APIs.

Besides payment platforms, other platforms like Inmoji, which creates branded, interactive emojis for integration into consumer messaging, also announced a new feature, Inmoji Brand Bots, this year.

An extension of Inmoji’s current offering, the new, shareable Brand Bots provide brands with a splash page contained within a clickable icon. The intent is to allow marketers to generate more contextual commerce, as well as consumer insights through data.