While eCommerce businesses have been present for a long time now, their popularity was not booming as much as it is now. Over the past few years, the use of eCommerce as a means to shop online has drastically increased and during the recent pandemic outbreak, it went ten folds higher, because we all were at home and considering going out was unsafe, online shopping was our best bet.
Keeping all this situation in mind, many social media companies expanded and introduced new features related to ecommerce on their application, specially Facebook and Instagram. However, WhatsApp was one place which did not offer any ecommerce services, but looks like this is about to change now.
On Wednesday, Reuters announced that WhatsApp has tested a new feature in São Paulo, Brazil, which will allow users to make possible searches related to business and find shops and other services through a provided directory in the app.
The directory will provide users with a list of shops and other services which will be available in their region and users can make us of it. The newly introduced list will contain thousands of categories like food, retail and many other local services etc.
But the question is why now? Well, the company had been trying to step into the ecommerce game for a while now and has made some efforts like where they introduced shopping tools and carts in some regions. However, the company saw the increasing demand of ecommerce on WhatsApp as vendors and buyers would often use it as the platform for the final communication of their services by sharing their WhatsApp numbers on their Instagram and Facebook pages, and hence the company decided it was about time that WhatsApp got the same importance in ecommerce that it deserved.
However, while this is great news, WhatsApp has also assured its users that it will not be collecting locations or search results that will be made on the directory as a clearance for the recent scandal that was arose against them over privacy updates.
The feature currently is only operating in Brazil for a handful of users and if everything works well, it may move up to Indonesia and India and later throughout the globe.
WhatsApp is doing great with all the features it is introducing and we cannot wait to see what else the tech giant has in store for us.
Read next: Here’s What’s New in the New WhatsApp Beta for Android
Keeping all this situation in mind, many social media companies expanded and introduced new features related to ecommerce on their application, specially Facebook and Instagram. However, WhatsApp was one place which did not offer any ecommerce services, but looks like this is about to change now.
On Wednesday, Reuters announced that WhatsApp has tested a new feature in São Paulo, Brazil, which will allow users to make possible searches related to business and find shops and other services through a provided directory in the app.
The directory will provide users with a list of shops and other services which will be available in their region and users can make us of it. The newly introduced list will contain thousands of categories like food, retail and many other local services etc.
But the question is why now? Well, the company had been trying to step into the ecommerce game for a while now and has made some efforts like where they introduced shopping tools and carts in some regions. However, the company saw the increasing demand of ecommerce on WhatsApp as vendors and buyers would often use it as the platform for the final communication of their services by sharing their WhatsApp numbers on their Instagram and Facebook pages, and hence the company decided it was about time that WhatsApp got the same importance in ecommerce that it deserved.
However, while this is great news, WhatsApp has also assured its users that it will not be collecting locations or search results that will be made on the directory as a clearance for the recent scandal that was arose against them over privacy updates.
The feature currently is only operating in Brazil for a handful of users and if everything works well, it may move up to Indonesia and India and later throughout the globe.
WhatsApp is doing great with all the features it is introducing and we cannot wait to see what else the tech giant has in store for us.
Read next: Here’s What’s New in the New WhatsApp Beta for Android
