Facebook’s WhatsApp IM app for iPhone, Android and a lot of other platforms such as the web, will go free of charge forever, the company announced. That means you won’t need to pay the annual subscription fee of $1/year anymore.
“Nearly a billion people around the world today rely on WhatsApp to stay in touch with their friends and family,” the company said in a blog post announcing its decision to subscription-free on all platforms. ”From a new dad in Indonesia sharing photos with his family to a student in Spain checking in with her friends back home to a doctor in Brazil keeping in touch with her patients, people rely on WhatsApp to be fast, simple and reliable.”
According to Yahoo News, the company continued, for many years now, we’ve asked many people to pay a fee of $ 1 annually for downloading WhatsApp after their fresh start. Even as the company has grown, we have found that this approach hasn’t gone well with the company. Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number, and so they worried they would lose usage of their friends after their 1st year. So in the next few months, Whatsapp will remove fees from different versions of our app and WhatsApp won’t charge a fee for their service, $1 anymore”
WhatsApp will end up being Facebook’s second free chat app after Facebook Messenger, that’s nearly as popular among internet users.
Though the company intends to keep making money from its product. WhatsApp claimed it will start testing tools which allow businesses and third-parties to communicate with their customers, and that’s how WhatsApp will make money.
“That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight,” WhatsApp said, revealing that such notifications can potentially replace standard SMS messages in the foreseeable future.
