After so many years of its operation and existence, WhatsApp is going to charge people finally. WhatsApp is introducing its first-ever revenue-generating plan aimed at the businesses who use WhatsApp to communicate with their client. WhatsApp is going to start charging businesses for sending marketing and customer service messages after a fixed amount of time. The new WhatsApp Business API will allow the businesses to respond to their customers for free in the first 24 hours. After that, the company will be charged for each message with charges varying from country to country.
The new API will allow the businesses to message people only they are being contacted. Moreover, the API will help the businesses to program the shipping information, reminders, event tickets, appointments and so on easily.
WhatsApp Business API
The new business API will be implemented very soon as said by WhatsApp. They will be charing around 0.5 cents to 0.9 cents per every message depending on the country. WhatsApp Business has nearly 3 million active users and the introduction of such a scheme will boost their revenue generated directly from their users.
The new API is smartly made. The businesses will be charged only for the late replies they give to their users. In such a way, it will increase the pace at which the businesses reply to their clients. Hence it will facilitate faster communication and hence better customer service.
If Facebook is able to succeed with their strategy, it will be a big boost for the company. Nearly 1.5 billion are on WhatsApp and if they get their queries clarified at a good pace, they will prefer the system. If WhatsApp is able to establish themselves in this, they can replace all the customer support system as they have the user base with nearly everyone using their platform.
The scope is even more to the business API. Once the customer and businesses build a strong base, WhatsApp can change their plans. They can start charging based on a specific threshold or have a specific window open for free messages. But with the new update, businesses will become quite aware of their customer messages. They would want to serve them faster in order to avoid the extra charges. But, this might be a problem for them on the weekends and on holidays when the businesses might not be available to reply on time.
Verdict
Last year in September when WhatsApp announced Business App, they said they will soon start charging for the services they are providing. It has been quite a while and they have built nearly 3 million users on the platform. Another speciality on the platform is that the messages are end-to-end encrypted between the client and the business. Other than this, Facebook is soon going to launch product ads on its platform. When users click on it, it will initiate a business conversation on WhatsApp. Further, WhatsApp stated that they will soon start including ads on their platform. Just like Snapchat, WhatsApp will show ads in the status section for the users.
