You go to the cinema, point to its location, purchase tickets for 5 of your friends, you give them their tickets and they pay you back, all within the same app.
Adding payment processing to a chat app is just really, really convenient. I'm Spanish and we have a thing called "Bizum" here, you can send and receive money from and to anyone in your contact list instantly and free of charge. It's hugely popular even with no chat implementations.
I call BS on that, chat and payments haven't gone well together in the past. The friction of sending money to another person is very low, I don't think people really care whether it's on the app they're already on, or they have to switch apps.
Venmo tries to push it's messaging features but nobody really cared. People use Venmo because it's free transfers, they don't need a new chatting app that mixes money with memes. Welathsimple Cash tried that here in Canada but hasn't been terribly succesful either, and so has WhatsApp in India.
The reason WeChat become popular because it had first movers advantage and used it's reach to be the first payment service of it's kind. People didn't use it because it integrated with chat, they used it because it was good.
Adding payment processing to a chat app is just really, really convenient. I'm Spanish and we have a thing called "Bizum" here, you can send and receive money from and to anyone in your contact list instantly and free of charge. It's hugely popular even with no chat implementations.