WhatsApp Messenger is Now Free

WhatsApp Messenger is dropping its $1/year subscription fee and will be completely free to use. The company, now owned by Facebook, made the announcement earlier today.

We're happy to announce that WhatsApp will no longer charge subscription fees. 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. So over the next several weeks, we'll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.




So how will the app earn money? WhatsApp says it's not planning to introduce third-party ads.

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.

With nearly a billion users, dropping the subscription fee is a major loss in revenue for Facebook; however, it's unlikely that the company would make the move without having a good monetization plan in place.

You can download WhatsApp Messenger from the App Store at the link below...


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