WhatsApp has kicked started testing a new business directory that lets users find local shops and services with presence on the app, the pilot will begin in São Paulo, Brazil. The news was announced by the service’s head Will Cathcart via Twitter. Screenshots show how WhatsApp will show businesses sorted by categories like “grocery store” and “restaurant,” before letting users chat directly with them.
Although the Facebook-owned messaging service is most famous as a person-to-person messaging service, e-commerce has become an increasingly important part of its offering in recent years. As of last October, WhatsApp reported that over 175 million people globally used the service to message a WhatsApp business account every day.
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We’re kicking this off in São Paulo which is home to millions of small businesses. For those who aren't in São Paulo to try it out, here's what it looks like: pic.twitter.com/cMu9DwlUYw
— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) September 15, 2021
WhatsApp has offered a standalone app for small businesses since 2018, and since then has added features like support for product catalogs and shopping carts. In Brazil and India, it’s also started offering in-app payments, letting users make purchases directly from businesses, in addition to sending money to friends and family.
But this e-commerce push created problems for WhatsApp earlier this year when it updated its privacy policy. The changes were widely interpreted as giving WhatsApp the ability to share data from people’s personal chats with Facebook, when in fact the changes only applied to chats with businesses, which may see data stored on Facebook servers. The new policy generated an outcry, with WhatsApp competitors Telegram and Signal reporting a surge in new users in response.
Although the pilot is limited to one city in Brazil for now, Idema said that India and Indonesia were among the candidates for expansion in the future.
