How Does WhatsApp Make Money Even With No Ads?

Founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, WhatsApp is now worldwide in 180 countriesIt has more than two billion users. Of these, only 390 million users come from India, 108 million from Brazil, and 75 million from the United States.

Moreover, such a popular app has no subscription fees or any ads. Before being bought by Meta minor subscription fees WhatsApp, which has income models such as, no longer has such a feature. That being the case, it’s hard not to think about how the company makes money.

WhatsApp’s first revenue model was subscription based.

When WhatsApp was first installed, users paid 1 dollar for 1 year. This is free for the first year and renewal for the second year in some countries. 1 dollar change could show.

Later, the company abandoned this business model and avoided in-app advertisements. as one of the most popular apps continued to exist.

WhatsApp was acquired by Meta, formerly Facebook, for $19 billion in 2014.

At its peak during the subscription-based model, WhatsApp had around 700 million users worldwide. When purchased by META; After Instagram and Facebook Messenger largest subsidiaries became.

In 2018, Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp and then director of Facebook Inc. recommended ad model and security of user data He left the company due to disagreements about

Let’s come to our main topic; How does the company make money?

In fact, advertising on the app has occasionally become the company’s agenda, but they have abandoned this plan. In addition, personal on WhatsApp by selling our information and conversations about making money Speculation has also been raised.

The “end-to-end encryption” in WhatsApp means that no one but us and the other person can access our conversations. But in WhatsApp’s privacy policy, our messages by third parties Even if it is not read, it is included that they can automatically target data and create appropriate advertisements for us. This could mean that they indirectly make money from advertisements.

WhatsApp has a service called “WhatsApp for Business”.

Businesses that use the app for sales and support can sign up for WhatsApp for Business. Thus, users can create a business profile. to a verified business profile they may have.

Verified businesses; certain websites or Facebook pages. with important links It can create business profiles, set up autoresponders, or even connect landline numbers with WhatsApp.

The WhatsApp Business app is currently free to download and available to all businesses, but the company monetizes it through the WhatsApp for Business API.

WhatsApp Business API; It’s used by big brands like Netflix, Uber, and Wish. businesses, to use the platform and give quick responses. encourages.

It charges businesses for delayed responses, so the business free of charge within 24 hours While you can reply, you are charged for subsequent replies.

As a second monetization method: WhatsApp Pay

WhatsApp Pay is a payment feature similar to PayPal. With this feature, users can for free can send money. The receiving party is charged 3.99% per transaction.

Like other money sending services, this app connects to a linked bank account where money is received or deposited. This service; right now only on certain devices, Available in India and Brazil.

Still, for such a large company, it doesn’t seem like very satisfactory revenue streams.

It seems that Meta, which holds the most important of the social media networks, does not have big steps to monetize WhatsApp for now. In the future, no ads or free use We will see together whether he will give up on such policies.