Whatsapp courts business but will introduce charges

WHATSAPP is to start charging companies for responding to customer queries through its app.

Parent company Facebook, whose user growth has begun to stagnate, is hoping the move will make Whatsapp its next big money-maker.

The app will allow businesses to send out messages to customers and to automate sales or queries, giving companies access to a potential base of Whatsapp’s 1.5bn users.

Businesses will still only be able to message people who have contacted them first. They can respond to messages from users for free for up to 24 hours, but will be charged a fixed rate by country for messages sent after that. They will also be able to buy advertisements on Facebook’s News Feed that allow users to message them via Whatsapp.

Whatsapp has long been at the centre of a struggle at Facebook on how best to turn the free app to revenue generation. Whatsapp initially had a subscription fee when it was bought by Facebook for $22bn (£17bn) in 2014, but this was scrapped under Facebook ownership in order to accelerate the app’s growth rate.

Since then, there has been internal debate over how to generate revenue from Whatsapp. Whatsapp is encrypted, meaning adverts cannot be targeted towards its users in the same way as they can on Facebook. Both of Whatsapp’s co-founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, have recently left Facebook, paving a way for changes on the app. The app has exploded in popularity in countries like India. Whatsapp also plans to allow adverts in the Status area of the app, starting next year.

The Status bar, which lets users post a story similar to on Instagram, has grown in popularity in recent years with around 450m users.