Message My Customer looking to raise €1m as it eyes US expansion

Message My Customer, a Dublin-based business, aims to have revenues of €1 million in 2024 as it targets expansion into the US.

The business provides a payments solution called Payemoji through traditional messaging apps, such as WhatsApp or Messenger, to replace the need for separate apps or terminals.

The business was started in 2021 by Michael Higgins, Damien Stephens and Daryl O’Regan. Message My Customer has 15 staff and has raised €4.1 million in funding.

“We turn whatever your favourite messaging app is into a business app for the client. This can be used to buy products, book appointments, whatever is needed to automate any customer journey they want,” Higgins told the Business Post.

“We’ve a conversational commerce company. We can talk in whatever messaging app you talk to us in.”

The idea grew out of the experience Higgins had in Asia, where the likes of WeChat are used for similar purposes.

More advanced

“We’ve already seen that Elon Musk is seeking to turn Twitter, now X, into an everything app. Meta and Apple are more advanced again with their business suites. Businesses sit on top of these well-known apps to engage with customers in many countries,” Higgins said.

“It’s a complicated piece of technology. We took most of the time up to now in development and worked with some pilot customers last year. We really just started selling it in the last six months.”

Message My Customer is working through partners to reach larger enterprises to work alongside and Higgins said the business is in discussions with a large bank to enable an alternative to a point of sale terminal for its customers.

The business has been supported by Enterprise Ireland since its early days and Higgins said the agency had provided substantial help to Message My Customer. The company is part of the high potential start-up unit and founders forum.

“They have been very helpful, particularly across their locations internationally. They help us get meetings and develop local market knowledge. They also provide introductions to corporates,” Higgins said.

“Just having the Enterprise Ireland brand, it’s bigger and gives us extra credibility. They’ve been amazingly helpful.”

The business has started selling into Ireland and the UK and is in the process of rolling out in the US as well.

“We want to make sure we’re clear on our product-market fit there. We just got selected by Meta for its Future of Business Messaging programme. That will help us as they’ll introduce us to American corporates,” he said.

“We want to hit the €1 million revenue mark next year. From there we’ll look at a Series A round after that.”

This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland