WhatsApp’s building apps for Biz

Hot on the back of verified business accounts, WhatsApp has announced business apps designed to let money-makers co-ordinate communications with their customers.

Split by size

It appears as though they’re developing completely separate tool sets to be used by enterprises of differing scales.

They say they’ll be offering ‘a free WhatsApp Business app for small companies’ while an ‘enterprise solution’ is also in the works for bigger companies.

Strategic uncertainty

WhatsApp is apparently testing a different monetisation strategy to the ones we’re used to from Facebook ventures.

In fact, the word is that they’re not entirely certain how they’ll end up making money out of it—but they sure seem confident that something will work out.

Based on what we’re seeing here…

The early days of WhatApp’s profit from business activity will probably come through the ‘enterprise solutions’. There, they can offer immediate and obvious benefit to corporates by way of notifications that go direct to customers’ devices.

Small-to-medium enterprise are likely to get a free ride, for a while at least.

At the boutique level, base business functionality may remain free forever, with the potential for paid boosts and the like to take things in new directions as time goes on.