WhatsApp is a huge social network with over 1.3 billion users who use it monthly and it is still Facebook’s biggest purchase to date.
However it has reached a time where Facebook has to get its money back and this means WhatsApp has to be monetized somehow. We have seen a way WhatsApp would do that and that is through tests like WhatsApp payments and business accounts.
Well today the company has made that test official in a blogpost where in the coming months, they will be testing new features that will make it easier for people to communicate with businesses.
“We’ve heard stories of shopkeepers who use WhatsApp to stay in touch with hundreds of customers from a single smartphone, and from people who are unsure about whether or not a business on WhatsApp is authentic,” they said on the post. WhatsApp knows that these businesses would need an official presence which means a verified profile so that people can identify them easily.
They are also building and testing new tools that will be in a free WhatsApp Business App for small companies and an enterprise one for bigger companies. These tools could inform their customers of such things like flight times from airline companies and delivery confirmations from freight companies.
WhatsApp is testing these new tools in a closed beta and verified businesses will be identified by a green badge. The chats between a customer and the business will be end-to-end encrypted just like in the regular chats.
This is a new chapter for WhatsApp and it will open new possibilities in regions where WhatsApp is incredibly popular, like Kenya.
[…] This is an interesting time for Brian Acton to leave WhatsApp after being in the company since its inception. Facebook bought it for $19.3 billion over 3 years ago and now has a staggering 1.3 billion active users. The company is also preparing to go to the next phase of its life which is all about it monetizing the platform. […]
[…] month ago, WhatsApp announced that they are testing features that will make it easier for people to communicate with businesses. This included a free dedicated app called WhatsApp Business which will incorporate these tools in […]