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  • Tech - News - Tech Companies
  • Updated: September 16, 2021

WhatsApp Regulates New Business Directory To Help Users Find Local Services

WhatsApp Regulates New Business Directory To Help Users Find

WhatsApp has announced that it is regulating a new business directory in São Paulo, Brazil that lets users find local shops and services with a presence on the app.

WhatsApp service head, Will Cathcart shared a screenshot of the announcement on Wednesday on Twitter that WhatsApp will show businesses sorted by categories like “grocery store” and “restaurant,” before letting users chat directly with them. Reuters reports that the test will include thousands of businesses in the city.

Since 2018, WhatsApp has offered a standalone app for small businesses and since then added features like support for product catalogs and shopping carts. In Brazil and India, it’s also started offering in-app payments, letting users make purchases directly from businesses, in addition to sending money to friends and family.

Earlier this year, the WhatsApp e-commerce push created problems when it updated its privacy policy. The changes were widely interpreted as giving WhatsApp the ability to share data from people’s personal chats with Facebook, when in fact the changes only applied to chats with businesses, which may see data stored on Facebook servers.

Cathcart said WhatsApp is not logging users’ location or which businesses they browse when using the new directory feature.

WhatsApp also offers a WhatsApp Business API to connect larger businesses with customers. It’s notable for being one of the few ways WhatsApp is monetized directly since it currently doesn’t show ads like Facebook and Instagram. Although WhatsApp reportedly backed down from its immediate plans to show in-app ads last year, Facebook’s vice president of business messaging Matt Idema told Reuters that “over the long term” he expects ads to be part of WhatsApp’s business model “in some form or another.”

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