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WhatsApp for Business gets more expensive — and cheaper

WhatsApp for Business gets more expensive — and cheaper

Users of WhatsApp for Business will soon get new rates for sending so-called utility and marketing messages. This, according to parent company Meta, should combat spam on the platform.

Meta is charging WhatsApp for Business users different rates for four categories of messages. These categories are marketing conversations for offers and new product announcements, utility conversations for order updates and account statements, authentication messages for one-time passwords, for example, and service conversations, such as customer inquiries.

Rates down and up

On Aug. 4, utility conversation rates go down, while on Oct. 4, those for marketing conversations go up. A WhatsApp for Business conversation is a 24-hour thread of messages exchanged between sellers and buyers within a given category.

Reason for the price increase for marketing conversations, writes TechCrunch, may be that WhatsApp for Business has been under fire for some time due to the high number of spam messages distributed through the messaging service.

Meta has been addressing this problem for some time and is gradually implementing various rules. The goal is to curb abuse of WhatsApp for Business.

Also read: WhatsApp expands the number of participants for a video call to 32