Will Cathcart, head of the messaging service WhatsApp, announced that the platform is testing a new business directory in São Paulo, Brazil, allowing users to find local stores and services that have a presence on the app. Screenshots show how the platform categorizes businesses under labels such as "grocery store" and "restaurant," before allowing users to chat directly with them. Reuters reported that the test includes thousands of businesses in the city.
Despite being known primarily as a person-to-person messaging service owned by Facebook, e-commerce has increasingly become a significant part of its offerings in recent years. As of last October, the platform reported that over 175 million people globally used the service to send messages to business accounts on a daily basis. The platform launched a standalone app for businesses and small enterprises in 2018, adding features such as product catalogs and shopping carts since then.
It started offering in-app payments in Brazil and India, enabling users to make purchases directly from businesses, in addition to sending money to friends and family. However, this push towards e-commerce caused problems for the platform earlier this year when it updated its privacy policy. The changes were widely interpreted as giving WhatsApp the ability to share data from personal conversations with Facebook, although the changes apply to chats with businesses, which may see data stored on Facebook servers.
The new policy sparked backlash, with WhatsApp competitors Telegram and Signal reporting an increase in new user registrations in response. Cathcart stated that the platform does not track the locations of users or businesses they browse when using the new directory feature.
In addition to the WhatsApp for small businesses app, the platform also offers the WhatsApp Business API to connect large companies with customers. Notably, this is one of the few ways WhatsApp directly monetizes its service, as it does not currently display ads like Facebook and Instagram. Although the platform backed away from its immediate plans to display in-app advertisements last year, a Facebook vice president told Reuters that he expects advertising will eventually be part of the platform's business model in some form.
