WhatsApp has announced that it will be removing its subscription, making the service free for everyone. Better yet, it will no longer serve third-party ads to users, although it has an idea for how to better connect users with businesses and organizations.
The change, announced on its official blog on Monday, removes the subscription fee that some users had to pay after a year of use.
“For many years, we’ve asked some people to pay a fee to use WhatsApp after their first year of use. But as we’ve grown, we’ve found that this approach hasn’t worked well,” the blog post says.
The subscription fee will be removed from various versions of WhatsApp “over the coming weeks.”
WhatsApp is well aware that killing its only source of revenue will raise questions about the introduction of third-party advertising. But the company has a different view.
“Starting this year, we’ll be testing tools that let you use WhatsApp to communicate with the businesses and organizations you want. That could mean contacting your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent or contacting an airline about a delayed flight,” the post continues.
We estimate that WhatsApp will charge organizations and businesses to create channels with users through the service, but no details have been announced yet. The idea is not new at all — a Bloomberg report in May 2015 claimed that WhatsApp could enter B2C messaging “in the long term.”
WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook for $16 billion in February 2014, currently has “nearly” 1 billion users, according to the post. Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that he expects the service to reach its goal and be “mature” to generate revenue.
