NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Did you ever text a coffee to your buddy? Now you can with this new app.

Created in the Philippines, Cheers is the first social messaging app that’s built around a mobile wallet.

Imagine paying for your friend’s coffee while chatting. Cheers makes this possible by offering a selection of “gifts” between friends. The app essentially adds a new dimension to how people interact over mobile: aside from texts, smileys, stickers, and multimedia content, users can send items – or their equivalent amount – right into a friend’s wallet (so long as that friend uses the same app, of course).

Cheers founder Gregor Arn – or Mister G, as he’s known inside the app – says this transforms messaging. “Cheers offers users an opportunity to send low amounts of money to each other. Unlike a dull money transfer, we have embedded this as part of messaging and made it socially relevant. It’s the most meaningful way to send someone a small token of appreciation.”

The Android version of the app was launched in December, and then its iOS counterpart arrived in January.

While Cheers is the first such social app to launch with a wallet, China’sWeChat has grown to include epayments and a mobile wallet. Last summer, WeChat added in support for money transfers between friends. During last week’s Chinese New Year festivities, WeChat users in China used that feature to gift each other one billion relatively small sums of cash in the course of just a few hours.