Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, announced that a new business catalog is being piloted in Sao Paulo, Brazil, allowing users to find local stores and services that exist on the app. The screenshot shows how WhatsApp will display businesses classified into categories such as grocery stores and restaurants, and then let users initiate contact with them directly. This test will include thousands of businesses in the city.
I'm excited we’re starting to pilot a local business directory within @WhatsApp. This will help you find and contact local businesses, like your neighborhood coffee shop, florist, clothing store and more.https://t.co/kNvUtn7FWR
— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) September 15, 2021
Although the most famous information service under Facebook is the information service between people, in recent years, e-commerce has become an increasingly important part of its products. As of October last year, WhatsApp reported that more than 175 million people worldwide use the service to send messages to WhatsApp corporate accounts every day.
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Since 2018, WhatsApp has provided a standalone application for small businesses, and since then, features such as support for product catalogs and shopping carts have been added. In Brazil and India, it has also begun to provide in-app payments, allowing users to shop directly from businesses, in addition to sending money to friends and family.
But when WhatsApp updated its privacy policy earlier this year, this e-commerce push caused problems for it. These changes are widely interpreted as giving WhatsApp the ability to share people’s personal chat data with Facebook. In fact, these changes only apply to chats with businesses, and these data may be stored on Facebook’s servers. The new policy evoked a strong response, and WhatsApp’s competitors Telegram and Signal reported a surge in new users.
Cathcart said that when using the new directory feature, WhatsApp will not record the user’s location or the businesses they browse. In addition to applications for small businesses, WhatsApp also provides WhatsApp Business API to connect large businesses and customers.
It’s worth noting that this is one of the few ways WhatsApp directly makes money because it currently does not display ads as Facebook and Instagram do. Although WhatsApp reportedly abandoned its direct plan to display in-app ads last year, Matt Idema, Facebook’s vice president of business information, told Reuters that in the long run he expects ads to become part of WhatsApp’s business model. In a form or other way.
Although the pilot is currently limited to one city in Brazil, India and Indonesia are among the candidate countries for future expansion.
