Soon, Pay Your Bills via Twitter in India

Twitter users in India may soon be able to pay their bills though the micro-blogging site, the media reported.

The company has announced a partnership with India-based startup Lookup to enable users send a direct message to @lookuplite in order to book appointments, inquire about services and make transactions with businesses, Techcrunch reported.

Lookup lets retailers and consumers chat with each other through direct messaging. It boasts of 1.2 million registered users despite listing merchants from Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

Currently, users can buy directly within the social network thorough Twitter’s ‘Buy’ button.

In the new arrangement, orders and payments would be fulfilled separately and offline with Twitter simply facilitating the conversation.

Lookup will use Twitter’s API, as well as its monitoring capabilities, to handle connecting the customer to the prospective merchant.

Instead of connecting users through phone numbers, Lookup instead uses Google Maps to give users a view of all the retailers in their area.

Last week, a new study found that illegal online pharmacies are using Twitter to promote prescription drug abuse of controlled substances.

“This study is the first to establish an empirical link between Twitter content and illicit online pharmacies which promote the illegal sale of drugs that have significant abuse potential,” said study co-author Timothy Mackey from University of California-San Diego.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), young adults are the biggest abusers of prescription opioid pain relievers, ADHD stimulants, and anti-anxiety drugs