By Adedapo Adesanya
WhatsApp has launched a new feature to make it possible to search for businesses within its app for the first time.
The Facebook-owned company testing the in-app business directory in Sao Paulo, Brazil, says it allows users to find shops and services through a directory in the app, making it the latest offering in Facebook’s drive to bolster e-commerce on its services.
According to Mr Matt Idema, Facebook’s vice president of business messaging in an interview with Reuters, “This could be … the primary way that people start a commerce process in WhatsApp.”
Mr Idema said previously businesses were promoting their WhatsApp numbers on packaging or websites or using Facebook ads to bring users into chats on WhatsApp.
The messaging service has increasingly courted business users, with a specialized app for small firms and an Application Programming Interface (API), or type of software interface, for larger businesses to connect their systems, which generates revenue.
As online retail has continued to boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook has pushed in-app shopping features across its other apps – Facebook and Instagram.
In June, Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s Shops feature would expand to WhatsApp in several countries.
WhatsApp said the new test would include thousands of businesses in categories like food, retail and local services across certain Sao Paulo neighbourhoods.
It was also revealed that India and Indonesia, two of Asia’s booming commerce zones, were good next candidates to expand the feature.
The company, which has faced user backlash amid confusion over privacy updates and was fined by the Irish data protection regulator over privacy breaches, said it will not know or store the location of people’s search or results through the new directory feature.
WhatsApp, unlike Facebook and Instagram, does not run ads in its app but Mr Idema did not rule out the possibility that it could introduce the feature.
“There’s definitely a route on ads, which is Facebook’s core business model, that over the long term I think in some form or another will be part of the business model for WhatsApp,” he said.
WhatsApp says about one million advertisers currently use Facebook and Instagram’s ‘click to WhatsApp’ ads to send users to the messaging app.
He also said WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for $19 billion in 2014, has been slow to monetize its features, was also excited about non-ad models like building software to help businesses to manage their services across Facebook’s apps.
Aduragbemi Omiyale