Mastercard Backs WhatsApp Checkout in Kenya, Where Meta’s Own AI Tools Won’t Look

Mastercard is embedding card payments directly into WhatsApp conversations through a collaboration with commerce platform Flowcart, launching in Kenya before scaling across East Africa — a bet on a channel that now carries more than a fifth of all Kenyan online shopping orders. The “chat-to-pay” arrangement lets consumers discover products, place orders and complete payment inside a single conversation, without being redirected to an external website or app. Payments run through embedded links,