In an official Blog Post, WhatsApp has made an announcement that will sound music to ears of millions of its users across the various operating systems and devices. WhatsApp has decided to drop its annual subscription fee of $1 and now it is free for anyone, on any device, on any platform.
That’s why we’re happy to announce that WhatsApp will no longer charge subscription fees. For many years, we’ve asked some people to pay a fee for using WhatsApp after their first year. As we’ve grown, we’ve found that this approach hasn’t worked well. Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number and they worried they’d lose access to their friends and family after their first year. So over the next several weeks, we’ll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.
WhatsApp has also made it clear that it is not going to display Ads to make money but seems they will introduce tools enabling WhatsApp users to communicate with relevant businesses and organizations. This means soon you will able to subscribe to services or make inquiries with Banks and similar entities by using WhatsApp.
Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today’s announcement means we’re introducing third-party ads. The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.
