Facebook announced on Thursday that the app would begin providing e-commerce options and hosting services for businesses who use the service to engage with their customers as part of its aim to increase income from WhatsApp. Additionally, the business announced that it will soon begin charging WhatsApp Businessusers to keep using the service.
Overall, the Facebook-owned company outlined three ways that the app will generate income in the future: business sales, Facebook hosting services, and online shopping. Businesses will now be able to sell goods on WhatsApp using Facebook Shops, an online storefront introduced earlier this year, as part of the improvements. We’ll increase the options consumers have for browsing the goods on offer and making purchases directly from a chat. Additionally, according to the company, we aim to make it simpler for companies to include these functionalities into their current commerce and customer solutions.
The company will also start providing Facebook Hosting Services, which it claims would give businesses a new way to manage their WhatsApp conversations. The option to store messages, chat histories, and other data on Facebook servers will be made available to small and medium-sized enterprises using WhatsApp Business.
Regarding the subscription service, WhatsApp claims that the money will be used to continue developing its own company while expanding the availability of free end-to-end encrypted text, video, and voice calling to more than two billion people. Please take note that while the hosting service would be made available in 2021, the shopping tool would begin to roll out before the end of current year. Although the company has not given a specific date, WhatsApp Business will eventually cost money, according to the business.
