Within the scope of the Digital Markets Law, which the European Union has made mandatory for every technology company, WhatsApp has started testing a new feature in the application. With this feature, WhatsApp will include all chat applications on the platform.
Third-party chat support is coming to WhatsApp
WhatsApp continues to increase its popularity, especially in Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. The platform has grown rapidly as it is also easy to get new users on the platform because it is tied to a phone number and find the rest of your contacts on the platform.
This accessibility has given WhatsApp unprecedented popularity. But it looks like the platform will also take steps to open itself up to other messaging services as part of its compliance with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.
As spotted by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on a new section within the app that will host third-party chats.
We do not have more information about this from within the application. But to guess what it is, it looks like the first step towards interoperability between messaging platforms.
The European Commission recently passed the Digital Markets Act, which forces big tech companies to open their products and make it harder for them to raise capital as a monopoly.
The Commission also recently marked some companies and their products as “gatekeeper platforms”, giving them six months to comply with these regulations. Meta, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are included in this list.
This means the company needs to ensure interoperability in these messaging services and open them up to external companies as well.
Users on other messaging services will be able to message you via WhatsApp so they can communicate with you without having to install and sign up for WhatsApp.
In summary, if someone prefers a particular messaging app, they will be able to use that app to communicate with users who prefer another app, thanks to interoperability.
This will allow smaller companies to get rid of their disadvantages and to establish themselves in the market and even to compete with large companies.
We’ll see how WhatsApp implements this feature while delivering on its security and encryption promises and maintaining compatibility with features like Communities. It is not known at this stage whether this feature will spread to markets outside Europe.