A typical online checkout experience is bloated by friction. Additionally, while more and more companies are building solutions around online checkout, few are rethinking it from scratch. One such company is OneText. This is building what is called a “text-to-view network.” This will allow shoppers to complete their purchase via text message.
Founded by former PayPal employees, the company has closed a $4.5 million seed round backed by Khosla Ventures, Cotue, Citi Ventures, Y Combinator, Good Friends (a fund created by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds, Harry's) and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.
Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Fudem came up with the idea while working on the PayPal checkout team. There he saw many startups with smooth UX stumbled on the hurdles going to the same market. Convince merchants to exchange existing payment flows.
“It's a hard pitch,” Fudem said, adding that many merchants don't even have the freedom to choose a checkout provider. It is often determined by the e-commerce platform.
By using SMS, OneText does not require merchants to replace existing checkouts on their website. Large platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp also have e-commerce capabilities, but Fudem believes brands need direct, ownable relationships with customers.
OneText sees it as a competitor to SMS marketing companies known for its masses, impersonal messaging and spam links.
Instead, use a combination of tools that includes two-way conversations and humans in loops with AI-powered, to improve your transformation by 20-30%. Features such as cart recovery, post-purchase upselling, and shopper-specific recommendations will contribute meaningfully to its performance.
Under the hood, OneText runs its own wallet and integrates with the brand's existing processor to complete the transaction. OneText safely boosts customer payment information after your first purchase. From then on, they can reorder with a single reply.
This “card-on-file” setup is something that appears to make text commerce as well as charging items into a room during your stay at the Hotel.
To do that, OneText uses what FUDEM calls “consent” automation. If a brand wants to request a customer to reorder, OneText will text that payments will pass in 24 hours unless the customer cancels. By default, you opt out.
Over time, shoppers will expand their networks to allow arched profiles across multiple brands, using pre-filled checkout data and smarter recommendations.
In that sense, the company is building towards something much bigger: a cross-branded SMS native payments network.
“Building a 10x better consumer wallet is really difficult,” says Fudem. “But you can create a business-to-consumer texting platform that brings you the 'recharge your room' experience. Only now, it's your phone number. That's how you build a network. ”
OneText passed the Y Combinator in 2023 and quietly built the platform after a demo day. Today, the platform has medium-sized e-commerce brands, and as customers say, it makes between $10 million and $100 million in annual revenue, but also supports small startups and large businesses.
“We've scaled three times the year-on-year, and we've made millions of revenue,” said Fudem, who started the company with CTO Daniel Blaine.