WhatsApp has scrapped its subscription fee in order to allow its users to communicate directly with businesses.
Until now, users were charged a small fee, 69p in the UK and $1 in the US, following a year of free usage.
The Facebook-owned messaging service will remain ad-free, but will be introducing capabilities for users to directly interact with chosen organisations.
This change could prove to be extremely beneficial for B2B brands, who will be keen to leverage its potential to improve customer engagement.
In a company blog, WhatsApp commented: “As we’ve grown, we’ve found that this [paid] approach hasn’t worked well. Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number and they worried they’d lose access to their friends and family after their first year.
“So over the next several weeks, we’ll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.
It added: “Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organisations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight.”
