After establishing its status as a leading mobile messaging platform, with more than a billion daily active users, WhatsApp is heading rapidly towards the next phase. On the agenda: monetization.
Without wasting any time, the company have already launched a pilot in order to test the new tools they have developed especially for that purpose. Tools which provide all sizes of businesses, whether small or large scale, a way to send customers useful notifications like: flight times, delivery confirmations, and other updates.
Among the larger app’s clients, WhatsApp mentions companies such as airlines, e-commerce sites, and banks.
From the user perspective, the company says you would gain both: a way to verify a business profile – a green check-mark badge would appear next to the contact’s name (see below) – as well as an easier way to respond to their messages.
Green badge symbolizes WhatsApp verified the phone number belongs to a business account
Moreover, in case you would like to stop a business from contacting you, WA says you could do that by using the block feature.
If you’re a business owner yourself, at the moment though, the pilot is closed. So if you’d like to apply your business to the program you’ll have to wait until appliance will be open.
It’s no secret WA were looking for a way to monetize their app for a long time now, after neglecting their monthly fee based subscription, more than a year ago. It’s only natural for the company to turn another way with their endeavor (there are mouths to feed), but whether this is where WhatsApp would finally find its optimal revenue model – it’s still unclear.
