Xara's WhatsApp commerce tool

Xara is pitching WhatsApp as a storefront, checkout lane, and back office for small merchants, all inside a single chat. (usexara.ai) The company’s website describes Xara as an “AI-powered financial assistant” that runs inside WhatsApp and lets users send money, pay bills, and complete transactions with text, pictures, or voice notes. Search results tied to Xara’s recent marketing also frame the product around merchant tasks such as sales, invoicing, payments, deliveries, and reviews. (usexara.ai) (youtube.com) That pitch builds on WhatsApp’s existing business rails. Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform already gives companies tools for messaging at scale, business profiles, automation, and APIs for managing business accounts and phone numbers. (developers.facebook.com 1) (developers.facebook.com 2) Meta has spent the last two years adding more commerce features to those rails. In September 2023, Meta said WhatsApp Flows would let businesses create menus and forms inside chat, and said buyers in India could add items to a cart and pay without leaving WhatsApp. (about.fb.com) In June 2024, Meta said it was adding new artificial intelligence tools, Meta Verified options, and wider calling support for businesses on WhatsApp. In July 2025, Meta added centralized campaign tools and said businesses expecting heavy message volume could use the WhatsApp Business Platform for automation while keeping the WhatsApp Business app for day-to-day interactions. (about.fb.com 1) (about.fb.com 2) The audience for that pitch is large. Meta said in December 2023 that the WhatsApp Business app had more than 200 million users worldwide, a base that includes many small merchants already using chat as a sales channel. (about.fb.com) Xara appears to be coming at that market from payments first. Its public site focuses on consumer finance features such as transfers, bill pay, spending tracking, and PIN-protected payments, and says the service is certified by Nigeria’s Data Protection Commission. (usexara.ai) Reporting from Nigeria last year tied Xara to a June 2025 launch by founder Sulaiman Adewale and described the product as a WhatsApp-based banking assistant aimed at making transfers and bill payments easier through natural-language chat. TechCabal reported that Xara was built entirely inside WhatsApp, while later profiles said the service had expanded through local bank integrations and voice-note support. (techcabal.com) (ranksafrica.com) What Xara is now promoting is a broader version of the same idea: keep discovery, ordering, payment, and follow-up in one thread, instead of pushing a merchant and a buyer across separate apps. That is the same direction Meta has been building toward on WhatsApp, and startups like Xara are trying to package it into a simpler tool small businesses can actually run. (about.fb.com 1) (about.fb.com 2)