What about Twitch, which makes its money from sponsorship and virtual gifts to streamers, a model pioneered in China and then Korea? Or the US esports leagues which copy, again Korea and China?
There are many technologies which appear later in the US but Americans think are indigenous (and the reverse as well -- I don't mean to pick on the US, simply responding to your comment). Consider chip cards (commonplace in Europe for 20+ years, still not well adopted in the US) or text messaging (adopted very late in the US).
Although nowadays I don't think that's so much the case. Currently, I think America has more ideas coming out because it really is more innovative
1. Survivor bias. It's always easier to adapt a successful business model to your regional market by applying minor tweaks to it, than to create something completely from scratch.
2. Market size. The U.S. GDP is almost 10x the size in the Indian one. If you are creating an online business based on some non-regionally-specific idea, there is just no reason for you not to target U.S. first.
Speaking of American startups copying from China, I’ll give you an example: https://www.spin.pm
It's more than just a messaging app - it's more like a mash-up of WhatsApp, PayPal, Twitter and Facebook.
Things that WeChat had before WhatsApp were things like "Moments" which WhatsApp adopted quite recently (and in a more simpler way) as "Status"[0] and they also had very strong business integration which WhatsApp only recently began to flirt with through WhatsApp for Business[1].
[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000031/
[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000637/Introducing-the-WhatsApp-...
Weixin Pay's pricing for money handling seems pretty competitive compared to Western systems. 0.1% to transfer out of their system to your bank if you are transferring >$3200 USD, and 0.6% to process a payment [1]. I wonder when Weixin Pay and startups like Payoneer [2] will get tired of the friction imposed by the current banking interchange systems, and set up their own identity and interchange solution to start breaking 1% on all of a transaction life cycle's service fees (from payer removing from their account and paying, to payee accepting and debiting to their account, perhaps including forex conversion, to final settlement).
[1] https://chinachannel.co/take-wechat-payments-small-business/
For example, Apple's iMessage and Facebook's Messenger development over the past few years has basically been to become increasingly like WeChat. Whether it's stickers or payments or animations, etc.
I'm not familiar with payments being a feature on iMessage or Messenger, though. Unless you mean just the money transfers to friends, which existed on Facebook's desktop Messenger first IIRC, so it doesn't appear to be ripping off WeChat (which in my experience doesn't really support money transfers in quite the same way, unless we're talking about hongbao).
Also, weren't stickers a thing on Kakao Talk and LINE before WeChat?
surprised to see Line everywhere else in asia though (seems initial popularity decides a lot for these messenger apps - or some extremely unique features that can't be copied)
I've yet to see one startup which is America's answer to some chinese/indian startup. I hope that day comes soon.