WhatsApp will no longer charge subscription fees, the firm announced on its official blog post. By Staff Writer
The company said the fee that was charged to its users after a year of use hasn’t worked well.
“For many years, we’ve asked some people to pay a fee for using WhatsApp after their first year. As we’ve grown, we’ve found that this approach hasn’t worked well. Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number and they worried they’d lose access to their friends and family after their first year,” writes the company in its blog.
It added that over the next several weeks, it will remove fees from the different versions of its app.
How will WhatsApp remain afloat?
Will WhatsApp introduce third-party ads as it removes subscription fees?
“The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.”
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