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WhatsApp, the Meta-owned messaging service that’s taken the world by storm over the last decade, and has become arguably the most widely-used messaging platform in the UAE, will soon be a paid service on its Business variant.

Images: unsplash

The messaging platform will begin charging registered businesses using WhatsApp Business, from July 1 onwards. The move is being introduced with the aim of simplifying pricing, and aligning to industry-standard rates being followed by similar messaging services.

For registered businesses using WhatsApp Business to communicate with customers, utility and authentication rates will also be updated, with volume tiers being introduced as part of the brand’s new pricing strategy. It will follow an incentivised model, with businesses becoming eligible for better rates as they use more – resulting in longer term savings.

But there are a couple of things to note.

Marketing template messages, authentication template messages and delivered utility template messages will be charged – per message, as opposed to per conversation – and how much the business is charged per message, will depend on the recipient’s country code.

As elaborated by Meta, businesses will have a bit of leeway in when they choose to respond to customers, due to a designated 24-hour customer service window – which resets every time a new message is sent. Within this 24-hour customer service window, companies can send both free-form and utility messages at no cost, so they would only be charged for marketing template messages.

However…

Individual users of WhatsApp Business will not be required to pay to use the app. In the UAE, several expatriates and owners of multiple phone numbers (and consequently, multiple WhatsApp accounts) currently run both WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business on their phones.

You can find out more on the new changes, on WhatsApp’s official page.