A US-headquartered company founded by four Irish men has revealed that its messaging service is now reaching a billion end users around the world.

The news from Intercom came as it announced a major overhaul of its Messenger service, aimed at taking on competition from consumer based instant messaging services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, which are being used by some businesses.

Intercom, which has an office in Dublin city centre, makes a platform which helps organisations to interact and communicate more easily with their customers.

Earlier this year the firm revealed that it had raised $50m in fresh funding, and was planning to recruit a further 100 staff at its Dublin offices over the next year.

Intercom was founded in 2011 by Eoghan McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee, and David Barrett.

It currently employs 300 people between its offices in Dublin and San Francisco and has raised $116m in venture funding in total to date.

Today it revealed that it has 13,000 customers using its product around the world.

The new Intercom Messenger service has a range of new features, including personal teammate profiles to help consumers connect with the human inside a business, emojis, flexible multiple message delivery options and Gif support.

Launch partners for the new Intercom Messenger include Product Hunt, Expensify, Getaround, Fog Creek Software, and Le Parker Meridien New York.

The company claims to have invented in-app messaging in 2011.

Earlier this week, Facebook revealed that its Messenger service is now being used by one billion people around the world each month.