Indians can use Twitter to pay bills

New York: Social networking platform Twitter will soon allow users in India to pay their bills via the micro-blogging site.

The company has announced a partnership with India-based start-up Lookup to facilitate users to send a direct message to @lookuplite in order to book appointments, inquire about services and make transactions with businesses, Techcrunch reported.

Lookup lets retailers and consumers chat with each other through direct messaging. It boasts of 1.2 million registered users despite listing merchants from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Currently, users can buy directly within the social network through Twitter's 'Buy' button.

In the new facility, orders and payments would be fulfilled separately and offline with Twitter simply facilitating the conversation.

Lookup will use Twitter's API, as well as its monitoring capabilities, to handle connecting the customer to the prospective merchant.

Instead of connecting users through phone numbers, Lookup instead uses Google Maps to give users a view of all the retailers in their area. (IANS)