Meta announced on Thursday that it is opening the Meta Verified program to WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia, and eventually to more countries. Subscription plans for this service start at $14 per month.
The company is also adding more features to its business messaging service and allowing companies to use its APIs to serve customers through in-app calls.
Meta launched the verification program for creators in March 2023 and expanded it to businesses in September 2023. The program was limited to Facebook and Instagram until now.
The company said merchants who sign up for the program on WhatsApp will receive a badge and impersonation protection after sharing their business details with the company. These businesses will also get a verified WhatsApp channel for their marketing.
The plan also allows businesses to use their WhatsApp Business account from multiple devices. Additionally, they can create a custom website with their business details that can be shared with customers or suppliers.
WhatsApp already offers some of these features with WhatsApp Premium, which started testing with a few businesses in some regions in 2022, but never expanded the rollout to other markets.
Meta is also introducing the ability for users to call large businesses using WhatsApp via API — such as banks or airlines. For users, this will work like calling a customer support number, but through the app. Until now, WhatsApp Business users had to use their personal phone numbers to handle customer calls.
WhatsApp said it will charge companies for this service, but has yet to reveal pricing details.
Focus on business
Also inbound is a personalized messaging service for businesses that allows merchants to send messages such as coupon codes, information about new releases or birthday wishes to customers.
With more than 200 million monthly users on WhatsApp Business, Meta strives to create a complete suite of solutions that businesses can leverage to communicate with their customers. Meta also said separately that it is launching new AI-powered tools for automated customer support and ad creation today.
Click-to-WhatsApp ads worked well for Meta. In 2023, Zuckerberg said that these ads they have reached an annual operating rate of $10 billion and growing. India-based logistics company Shiprocket is also seeing positive results for merchants.
“The introduction of click-to-WhatsApp ads provides sellers with a more effective marketing channel, delivering a strong Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of 3-4x, further increasing transactions and engagement on the platform,” Praful Poddar, Chief Product Shiprocket official, told TechCrunch.
Meta focused last year on building shopping experiences on WhatsApp, but is now working on features related to messaging and customer support, which are a major cash driver for the company.
During the Q1 2024 earnings callthe company’s CFO, Susan Li, noted that Meta’s family of apps generated $380 million in revenue, largely due to business messaging on WhatsApp.
In a study Recently launched with Bain & Co, Meta said there is a huge opportunity in conversational commerce in India as out of 650 million users active on social media and messaging platforms, only 200 million people shop online. The company said its existing commerce and payment services only serve the top 200 million users. With WhatsApp, which has more than 400 million users in India, the company sees a huge opportunity to attract more merchants and make shopping easier for the rest of its user base.
