WhatsApp on Thursday detailed its plans to expand WhatsApp for Business offering to focus on shopping, payments and customer service.
The company is expanding its messaging platform when it comes to businesses as people are increasingly relying on WhatsApp to get business done as well, it said in an official release.
Over 175 million people message a WhatsApp Business account each day, WhatsApp said.
Moving forward, the platform is planning to add new experiences to the platform for businesses.
New shopping, customer service features
The Facebook-owned messaging platform will be expanding the shopping features for customers. Facebook had announced its Messaging through Shops feature back in August for WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. The new feature will allow users to view products right within the chat. WhatsApp will be adding ways for people to check out available products and make purchases right from a chat.
“We also want to make it easier for businesses to integrate these features into their existing commerce and customer solutions,” the company said.
The social media major is also planning to expand its partnerships with third-party business solution providers over the coming months. It will offer businesses the option to manage their WhatsApp messages through these hosting services that Facebook plans to offer.
Facebook further added that it will begin charging business customers for some of the services that it offers.
“We will charge business customers for some of the services we offer, which will help WhatsApp continue building a business of our own while we provide and expand free end-to-end encrypted text, video and voice calling for more than two billion people,” it said.
The platform will be gradually rolling out these new experiences to customers in the coming months.
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