WhatsApp Readying Commercial Messaging Offering

Last August, WhatsApp unveiled plans to let brands use its platform to send commercial messages to its users. Since then, it seems, the company has been making moves behind the scenes to get the platform ready for commercial messaging.

A report in Business Insider says that multiple references to “enterprise” message templates have been uncovered in WhatsApp’s code, according to Tweets from an account named ‘WABetaInfo’. One of the templates, for example would translate a message sent by a business into the relevant language for the user receiving it.

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $22bn in 2014. Speaking at Mobile World Congress in February 2014, not long after the deal went through, WhatsApp CEO and co-founder Jan Koum pledged to stick the company’s founding principles, saying: “We promise not to change that. We have built something that connects people and enables them to stay in touch; an uncluttered, simple user experience…The partnership me and Mark will have could not have been done without us agreeing on the vision for the product, and for it to be successful, it really needs to stay independent and have the autonomy we have. There are no planned changes, we will continue to execute on our goals and our vision even after the acquisition closes. We can only get the product to 1bn and 2bn users if we continue on the path we started on.”