Facebook paid $19 Billion for WhatsApp in 2014, and since then, many of us have wondered how Mark Zuckerberg will recoup his investment in the free messaging platform.

In these 8 years, WhatsApp has become an integral part of our lives and, except for very special cases such as the United States and China, it is currently the largest instant messaging platform on the planet with over 2 billion active users. In Latin America, personal and business relationships run on WhatsApp, as evidenced a few months ago when due to the failure of the application, the region was almost completely paralyzed.

So it’s not surprising that the former WhatsApp Business Summit the platform is being done in Brazil, a country that has surprised Zuckerberg himself and his team with the way the platform is being used to do business. Businesses like Nissan, which use the platform to generate leads (over 3,000 per quarter) and generate vehicle sales directly from the platform (the company indicated that in Q3 it sold over 70 cars directly on WhatsApp). . Or Banco do Brasil, whose marketing campaign via WhatsApp reaches more than 12 million potential customers every month, with a conversion rate 10 times higher than an email campaign. What’s more, 60% of the top 50 most valuable brands in Brazil use WhatsApp Business.

And if a few weeks ago we talked about amazing update for the platform announced by the company, I think today’s announcement is even more interesting, especially in terms of monetization and turning WhatsApp into a reality Super app. Ads are focused on helping people find what they need, send messages, and buy what they want from businesses without leaving WhatsApp.

find a company

WhatsApp launched -for Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia and the UK- a business directory so users can find companies directly on WhatsApp using options like categories (like travel or bank) or by name. This way they don’t have to look up the phone number on the website or save it to their contacts. Once found, users can exchange direct messages with businesses and vice versa, making communication easier.

WhatsApp payments

The company has announced that after a successful launch in India, testing is now starting to enable payments directly from the platform in Brazil. With this, what we are looking for is a seamless end-to-end shopping experience and without having to leave WhatsApp, enhancing the channel of communication between the customer and the company.

It was a very important and clear announcement about where WhatsApp is going and what we can expect from the platform in the near future. We hope that the payment issue will soon reach Colombia and other countries in the region.