In an FAQ published on its website, WhatsApp has revealed how businesses will be able to communicate with users via verified accounts. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, verified WhatsApp business accounts will be displayed with a green tick badge next to them, although the company has not yet specified what kind of checks it’s carrying out to verify businesses.
“WhatsApp business verification is currently limited to a small number of businesses participating in a pilot program,” notes the FAQ. Users will also know when they start talking to a business accounts on WhatsApp through the app, as messages will appear in yellow.
Since dropping its $1 annual service fee under acquiring parent Facebook, WhatsApp has been testing business accounts with a view to opening up a monetization pipe, even though CEO and cofounder Jan Koum has claimed it will never put “ads in the product”.
In a recent interview with FastCompany, Koum talked about how WhatsApp hits the 1.3 billion users mark without losing its focus.
“We’ve always wanted to build a product that is simple, utilitarian, really efficient, doesn’t use a lot of bandwidth, doesn’t use a lot of battery on your phone. The important thing for us is that all the growth has been organic,” says Koum. “We’ve never done any kind of growth hacking or anything like that. And we’ve always thought that that’s what makes our network stronger.”
All along, he adds, the company’s goal has been “getting every single smartphone user on our network and getting them to use WhatsApp.”
To read the entire interview, click here.
