Here I just send an URL to my friend via whatsapp. They click on the link. The site takes care of giving user whichever payment method they desire. User pays. That's it.
From a user's perspective to pay I just have to click a link. And to get paid I just send a link. How easier can it get?
Works really well!
To me, passing around a long unstructured numeric string is a lot more error-prone than selecting a contact from my banking app, or writing a short, structured phone number or email address. In any case, the recipient needs to know the secret one-word answer to the question set by the sender, which would prevent wrong parties from claiming money (this can be skipped if the recipient registered their phone number or email address forbauto-deposit).
Here I just send an URL to the GIF to my friend via whatsapp. They click on the link. They look at the GIF. That's it.
From a user's perspective to see a GIF I just have to click a link. And to send one I just send a link. How easier can it get?
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I swear HN's community has the brightest minds yet so often it fails to understand simple user experience stuff (see the infamous Dropbox comment)
If Whatsapp controls the payment platform, they can prevent a lot of fraud by mining their meta data. For example, if the payment is marked as a gift, but the parties do not have a vibrant conversation, there is likely fraud.