Meta said Thursday it is rolling out its Meta Verified program to WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia, and eventually to more countries. Subscription plans for this service start from $14 per month.
The company is also adding more features to its business messaging service and letting businesses use its APIs to serve customers through calls within the app.
Meta launched its creator verification program in March 2023 and expanded it to businesses in September 2023. The program has so far been limited to Facebook and Instagram.
The company said merchants who subscribe to the plan on WhatsApp will receive a badge and anti-impersonation protection after sharing their business's data with the company. These companies 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 web page with their company's details, which they can share with customers or suppliers.
WhatsApp already offers some of these features with WhatsApp Premium, which it started testing with a few companies in some regions in 2022 but never expanded the rollout to other markets.
Meta also introduces the ability for users to call large companies with WhatsApp via APIs, such as banks or airlines. For users, this works the same as calling a customer support number, but via the app. Until now, WhatsApp Business users had to use their personal phone numbers to answer customer calls.
WhatsApp said it would charge businesses for this service, but no pricing details have been announced yet.
Focus on companies
Also inbound is a personalized messaging service for businesses that allows merchants to send messages such as coupon codes, information about new launches or birthday wishes to customers.
With over 200 million monthly users on WhatsApp Business, Meta aims to build a full suite of solutions that businesses can use to communicate with their customers. Meta also said separately that it is launching new AI-powered tools today for automated customer support and ad creation.
Click-to-WhatsApp ads have worked well for Meta. In 2023, Zuckerberg said that these ads have reached an annual run rate of $10 billion and are growing. India-based logistics company Shiprocket has also seen positive results for merchants.
“The introduction of click-to-WhatsApp ads offers merchants a more effective marketing channel, delivering a strong return on ad spend (ROAS) of 3-4x, further driving transactions and engagement on the platform,” said Praful Poddar, Chief Product Officer at Shiprocket, told JS.
Meta focused on building shopping experiences within WhatsApp last year, but is now working on messaging and customer support-related features as this is a key cash driver for the company.
During his Earnings figures for the first quarter of 2024company CFO Susan Li noted that Meta's family of apps generated $380 million in revenue, largely driven by business messaging on WhatsApp.
In A study Meta recently released a joint venture with Bain & Co and said there is huge opportunity in conversational commerce in India as of the 650 million users active on social media and messaging platforms, only 200 million people shop online. The company said its existing merchant and payment services are only aimed at its top 200 million users. With WhatsApp, which has over 400 million users in India, the company sees a huge opportunity to onboard more merchants and simplify shopping for the rest of the user base.
