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No Ads, No Subscription Fee; How Does WhatsApp

Make Money?
By Ro shni Ramesan - February 1, 2021

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Every social media app that you use every day bombards you with advertisements. Services like Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and others, gain significant revenue f rom advertisements alone in exchange
f or keeping the apps f ree to use.

Yet there is one app on the market, one which is a significant part of our lives, that uses neither ads nor
subscription f ees to gain profit. 

It’s your trusty old WhatsApp. 

With over 2 billion users, WhatsApp has cemented itself as a part and parcel of our lives, but how does it
make money? 

Early Days As A Subscription-Based Model

Founded in 2009 by f ormer Yahoo! employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum, WhatsApp required its users to
pay a yearly f ee of $1 with the first year of use being f ree of cost. At its peak, while running on the
subscription model, WhatsApp had nearly 700 million users.

Most popular global mobile messenger apps as of 2020

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Acton and Koum had lef t Yahoo due to conflict with its ad selling ways so they had made sure right f rom
the start that WhatsApp would not become an advertisement f unded app. 

However, af ter Facebook’s record- breaking acquisition of WhatsApp f or a whopping $19 billion in 2014, at a
time when the user base was of 400 million, things were bound to change. 

And change they did.

Also Read: Indian Army Told Not To Use Facebook And WhatsApp As
Its Encryption Can Be Broken

WhatsApp For Business API

By 2016, WhatsApp had more than 1 billion users. In the same year, the company announced that it was
doing away with the subscription- based model and would instead be completely f ree. 

Number of monthly active WhatsApp users

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In 2018, WhatsApp launched a separate app, WhatsApp Business, meant specifically f or businesses. Users
could have a verified profile on WhatsApp, create a business profile, add links to their websites and social
media and integrate the WhatsApp f or Business API. 

While WhatsApp Business is f ree to use f or all businesses, it’s the API (application programming interf ace)
integration that f orms the basis of Whatsapp’s only revenue source. 

Businesses can integrate their business with WhatsApp, allowing them to send notifications to their
customers automatically. Getting messages about movie ticket bookings, flight updates, confirmation of
making a f ood order and more, are instances where this integration comes into play. 

If businesses respond to messages f rom customers af ter 24 hours, they would be charged f or every
message they sent. 

In a statement, the company said, “We will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with
businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. The goal is to have people communicate directly
with their banks, airlines, etc. over the app, while the businesses pick up the bill previously paid through
subscriptions.”

With more than 400 million users in India alone, in 2019, WhatsApp reported revenues of Rs 6.84 crore in
India, with a profit of ₹57 lakh.
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The Facebook Connection

Af ter Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, there were worries that Facebook, which is inf amous f or its
issues with privacy, would make use of the abundant private inf ormation that Whatsapp was responsible
f or. 

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014

The worries were not f or nothing as in 2017 the European Commission fined Facebook f or €110 million as
it “f alsely claimed it was technically impossible to automatically combine user inf ormation f rom Facebook
and WhatsApp”.

As of now, Facebook maintains that it does not use data f rom Whatsapp to optimise its ad services.
However, some amount of data is still shared with Facebook. 

“WhatsApp currently shares limited categories of information with the Facebook Companies. This consists
of the phone number you verified when you signed up for WhatsApp, some of your device information and
some of your usage information,” stated the company’s website. 

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It is your data and you yourself , that is the currency that f ree services like Facebook gain revenue f rom
and though WhatsApp insists that it does not give private inf ormation to Facebook, the only way to make
sure that your data is not being used is by deleting your WhatsApp account. 

In the meantime, WhatsApp is planning to release disappearing photos and videos like Snapchat to gain
even more users.

Image Sources: Google Images

Sources: WSJ, Investopedia, Statista

Find the blogger: @RoshniKahaHain

This post is tagged under: How Whatsapp makes money, Whatsapp revenue model, why does Whatsapp not
have ads, Facebook Whatsapp relation, Revenue in India, Whatsapp encryption, source of income for
whatsapp, how whatsapp makes money without ads, world’s most popular messaging app

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STARTS BELIEVING IN WHATSAPP UNIVERSITY

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Roshni Ramesan
https://edtimes.in/

Marvel fanat ic wit h a passion for philosophy. Awful violin player and oft en found in exist ent ial t hought s.

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3 COMMENTS

whatsapp group links

Marc h 14, 2021 At 4:56 PM

i am doing $2000 to $2700 mont hly using what sapp

Re ply

Have Jones
April 19, 2021 At 12:26 AM

If you make t hat kind of money t ell me how to do it .

Re ply

Laycon
June 10, 2021 At 7:58 PM
Can someone please put me t rue
Re ply

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