WhatsApp Announces Business App, Here is the detail
WhatsApp, the popular messaging app has made it official that it is now testing new tools that will help businesses to connect and communicate easily with its users. Acquired in 2014 by social networking giant, Facebook for a whopping USD 22 billion.
“Were building and testing new tools via a free WhatsApp Business app for small companies and an enterprise solution for bigger companies operating at a large scale with a global base of customers, like airlines, e-commerce sites, and banks,” WhatsApp said in a blogpost.
Through this business app, businesses will be able to provide customers with important updates about their product and service through notifications like flight details, delivery confirmation, tracking updates and other related information.
A green tick will be shown next to the contacts name to show that WhatsApp has verified that the stated phone number belongs to that business account.
According to the company, the chats between the business and the user will be end-to-end encrypted.
“Some businesses may use service providers to manage their messages, and those service providers may be able to read the messages you send to those businesses,” it added.
Not all users would like to receive the communication from business. Hence, if they don’t wish to receive the updates they can block them anytime.
WhatsApp plans to offer free app to small-to-medium sized businesses, though it hasn’t sketched the specific functionality of the business app. The messaging platform also plans to eventually charge companies to use some future features.
“The capabilities we are offering are free to use. But we do plan to charge businesses in the future. The focus right now is getting businesses on the platform” said Idema. Online entertainment ticketing platform BookMyShow and online pharmacy 1mg are among the initial set of pilot partners.