ChatterPay Brings ADA Payments Directly Into WhatsApp

Now you guys may have seen some really viral posts about Chatterpay, and this is a really simple app being able to send crypto assets from one WhatsApp account to another. Now there are billions of people in the world that use WhatsApp, and these guys have made it possible to send ADA from one account to another really simply, just by having someone else’s WhatsApp phone number. And I thought this was really cool, and I got to talk to Thomas and Martin at Draper University while I was there in San Francisco. So I interviewed Thomas about the origins of the app, how it actually works, and all sorts of things about it.

So guys, check out this interview here and make sure you follow them on socials as well. I know we’re going to hear a lot more from them in the future as well, as more and more things such as swaps and other features come into play on the platform too. Alright guys, let’s get into this interview. So Thomas, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for taking out some time. And I want to introduce the whole community to Chatterpay and what you guys are building and why everyone is so excited about it. So Thomas, first off, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for the space and the time.

Yeah. I’m really excited to do the podcast. All right. So first off, introduce Chatterpay.

How did it come about? Like, why did you build it? Well, it all started in 2024. So Chatterpay is a wallet for WhatsApp.

So anyone can send money through WhatsApp to any phone number in the world. And this includes AIDA. Now we can send AIDA to, with just a text or voice message directly on WhatsApp without any new application. And so this all started in 2024 on a hackathon where we would, we met for the first time with all the team.

And we had to build like a working prototype of Chatterpay on 24 hours, 72 hours. That’s a lot of pressure. That’s a lot of pressure. It’s typical from a hackathon.

That’s the fun thing of a hackathon, it’s like you have this clock against you, like we’re having to build a minimum viable product. So it all started there. We won the hackathon. We finished a small like prototype of transfers from WhatsApp.

And then we won the hackathon. Then we went to Uruguay. It was, it was in Argentina from Ethereum Argentina. Then we went to Ethereum Uruguay and we won that hackathon as well.

So then we got like a lot of momentum to say, okay, this is a, this idea that people likes. Yeah. We were excited too, because for me, I believe that with AI now building a new app is easy. Anyone can build a new application, publish on an app store.

So in the future, we are going to have tons of applications we already have. So I think that the, the things that are going to be really valuable are the ones that are integrated into their user daily lives. So my grandma knows how to use WhatsApp. My mom already knows how to use it.

They already have it installed. So why we don’t use those applications that made us spend billions on building it perfectly to build more applications on top. Right. So we were really excited about that idea.

We also went to another hackathon in Buenos Aires with ICP and we went to, we won the hackathon in Buenos Aires like in August, September. And the price was CryptoDev, the one that was done in Thailand, DEFCON 5. Yeah. So we went there, we pitched a charity to investors and then we couldn’t raise capital.

Yeah. Yes. Because we were too early. We were a pretty early stage product.

We were not even on mainnet. We have a few hundred users. And then suddenly in May, 2025, we got selected for an acceleration program in Malaysia from Scroll and L2 blockchain on IBM. So we went there, we launched mainnet, we did a really good announcement on social media about this WhatsApp payments product.

And it did really well. We got our first hundred users, our first 1,000 users, and initially we were a really technical team, you know, a kind of team who would never get up on a stage, present, pitch a product. So at the beginning it was really hard. We were practicing the pitch every day for one month, you know.

Yeah. So it was a really challenging and really insightful experience. And then we continue with the B2C product with like 10,000 users on IBM. And then we got to the Cardano program.

And during this program, we also got an LOI with a fintech with 3 million users in Latin America. How many users? 3 million. 3 million.

Wow. Okay. Go on. And we also launched on Cardano mainnet.

So now anyone can send ADA and USCCX directly on WhatsApp. This is a mainnet. We did the announcement like a few, last week, a few weeks ago. And it went really well.

A lot of people were interested, even though it was only send and receive money, you know, there is no yields, no swabs yet. So we are going to accelerate that probably in the future. And well, we’re excited about what we can do in the Cardano ecosystem. Yeah.

Well, what a journey. Hackathon after hackathon, and then building up your user base, 1,000 users at the beginning, and now potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions, hopefully with that fintech on board. And I think the application has been so well received by the Cardano community as well. And I’ve seen it like at work, I was filming Adam Dean playing with Martin and paying each other and it is really simple.

And the security that you guys put in, the usability, it all makes sense. Now, from my point of view, I think this whole application is a really good idea. Because if you look at what China has done over the last few years with WePay, Alipay and all their ecosystems, they live in that phone and everything is built around them. I’m so surprised that the Western country or the rest of the world hasn’t gone down this path yet.

And there isn’t much available in WhatsApp or anything like that. So I feel like we’re so far behind in so many ways, but what’s the future plan here? Are you trying to grow this to something like what we’ve seen in China over the last 10 years? That’s the idea.

That’s basically like the core inspiration for this, like the WeChat example. WeChat already proved that people can pay using the messaging apps and not having that on the Western side is like nonsense. We definitely need it. It doesn’t make sense.

Why hasn’t it been done? Why aren’t people doing it? Yeah. Meta tried to do this in the past.

So there is a fundamental thing about the regulation, how this works here. But basically as a big player like Meta, they have to seek for licenses in every country they operate at. That’s basically impossible for a company like Meta, it’s operating in 160 countries maybe. It’s impossible to get a license everywhere.

So now they are more focused on regionalized solutions. For example, India already has WhatsApp Pay, but it’s only for Indian customers. And there is no ability of cross-border payments. So if you want to, someone in India wants to, or vice versa, wants to send some money to a US person, they can’t because it’s how it works.

It’s only with fiat. So Meta leave the door open for anyone to go and build a payment solution. I want to be the leading one. Yeah.

So what’s the roadblocks here to achieve that? I’m assuming you have to form regulations, licensing, money transmitter licenses, AML, KYC, any other acronym I can think out there you guys will have to go through. Yes, of course. I mean, we are an unconsolidated wallet, so we are only using crypto.

That’s a roadblock itself because if I want to onboard my grandma, it’s really hard because she, first, she cannot use fiat to onboard, so she can only use crypto. We can partner with other licensed companies, but it’s not the best. And also to afford. I mean, if my grandma wants to go to the grocery store and pay for something, we could with crypto because now with all of these card providers, I mean, there is, it’s viable to have a card linked to your phone number to pay for stuff.

That’s a bit expensive for a product like we are. Yeah. But that’s definitely viable. That’s something that could surge in the future if there is a demand to have a card linked to WhatsApp.

So anytime you can send crypto to a phone number, they can spend it. Yeah. But the role we found is going directly to this fintechs that already have the licenses, but providing our WhatsApp infrastructure that it’s more than just a wallet. We have a web application, we have a CRM with AI to create any agent on WhatsApp with payments.

It’s something really unique. We also have marketing tools for fintechs. So for them, WhatsApp as a channel is a really good way to acquire users on emerging markets like Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia. There is a ton of opportunities to do with that.

And I think that the role is going to the partners that already have users, giving the solution, users, licenses, and giving just the solution and ourselves will remain as an on-goal sale wallet, you know. Okay. So your play is the B2B side of things, getting more of those fintechs on board. They’re doing the hard work and integrating in with the end user itself.

Okay. Okay. Awesome. So we’re going to start off in Argentina.

You’re going to try and get some more fintechs. I’m assuming you need more funding and all that. What’s your path here? How are you going to grow?

So initially we are going to raise probably pretty soon, a small pre-sale round. And then from there, we can start onboarding these fintechs into the SDK. And once we start having some fintechs, we will already be profitable. And the fintech ecosystem is pretty, how I say it, if you have one large player that already has you integrated and the feature is successful, then all the fintechs in the same region are going to want that feature.

They’re competing against each other. They are competing against each other all the time. And the first one, you also have this advantage of being the first one. There are fintechs in the ecosystem, for example, that integrated PITS, the Brazilian payment system.

And the ones that were first to do it, got a lot of attention from Web2 users. So the fintech ecosystem is very competitive. They are already doing the hard work of acquiring users. So what we are going to do to get into that hard work, if they’ve already done it, and they can integrate us basically.

Yeah. Okay. So we know the plan, what you guys are going to do next with Chatterpay. What’s next specifically for the Cardano users out there, because everyone here is a Cardano user watching.

They can send, receive ADA and USDCX. What on the roadmap do you have planned for us? Well, as I told you, there’s tons of opportunities, something to do. It could be yield with ADA, it could be new stablecoins, it could be DeFi protocols.

So users can get yield with the stablecoins. It could be cross-chain. So people who have assets on EVM, they can bridge in and out to Cardano and we can extract all of this into WhatsApp. So today, I mean, I think there is tons of opportunity for people who hold ADA to get into the Cardano ecosystem that is going to grow pretty fast.

Because if you compare the amount of DeFi activity that is on Cardano and the amount of ADA that is circulating, it’s nonsense that it has to grow. I mean, I think it will be explosive in the next years when the people start getting these new solutions, they get more trust on the ecosystem, ADA will start flowing in to the DeFi ecosystem and also from other ecosystems as well. If the people see interesting solutions, regardless of the blockchain, they will get in, right? Yeah, that’s right.

Lower the barrier to entry and make it as easy for the users as possible. Okay, this is amazing. If you guys haven’t checked out Chatterpay yet, I’ll put links down below so you can have a look at how the application and everything works. I had a little play.

It is seriously easy. They’ve taken out a lot of the nuances about wallets and stuff, you can send directly to a mobile phone number. So it just makes it that much easier. But in terms of the Draper experience, how have you found it?

What were some key highlights that you’ve taken away from this Draper experience? Well, we initially got like, we discovered the Cardano ecosystem thanks to Draper. So we didn’t think that it was possible to get this much organic attention. We were really happy to get those results with the launch announcement.

We found that the Cardano community is pretty active. We also got a lot of advice into all the verticals that the company has to attack, like fundraising, user acquisition, user interviewing, like go and sit with the people that are your potential clients and try to get feedback from them, try to see what their pain points are. That was really helpful. Yeah.

Okay, guys. So if you’re thinking about joining the Draper program in the future, have a look at our own experiences and, you know, reach out to Chattopay, tell them what you want within the app itself, what you think should be in there, because it’s all a part of the discovery, user journey discovery process for our applications and whatever we’re building. Tomas, thank you so much for joining the podcast. Good luck with everything that you’re doing.

Thank you. Good luck to you. And if anyone has any questions, my DMs are always open on Twitter, and you also can use the chat bot. If you have any issue, you can ask for human support, we will reach out.

Now I really hope you guys got something out of that. Don’t forget to follow them on socials down below. And like always, hit that thumbs up, like, subscribe, notification bell on your way out. I’ve got a few more interviews that I did at Draper University when I was there.

So make sure you subscribe so you can check those ones out as well. Some really cool projects being built in the Kedona ecosystem at the moment. All right, guys, stay positive and I’ll see you in the next video.