WhatsApp launches yellow pages for business search

Do you need to buy a product or pay for a service but Google is not being enough to serve you? O WhatsApp can help you in this quest! Since September 2021, the platform already had “Yellow pages” on the platform so that users — exclusively from the state of São Paulo — could find those services that were closer to them. Now the function will be made available to users throughout Brazil and will also arrive in other countries such as Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Check out!

Find companies by WhatsApp

A Meta — company that owns some social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and itself WhatsApp — says users will be able to browse a sort of business category (like travel or banking) and search directly to find businesses that can be contacted through the messenger.

Those enrolled in WhatsApp Business Platform in the five countries will appear in the directory, while in Brazil the directory will also be open to small businesses. The official launch of the feature follows a limited test that WhatsApp conducted in São Paulo last year. For now the feature is only available for Android in Brazil, but it is available for Android and iOS in other countries.

You must have asked yourselfbut why São Paulo?” and that was what we spoke when WhatsApp announced the news:

We're starting in São Paulo, which is home to millions of small businesses. Like everything we do on WhatsApp, we built this privately: we're not logging your location or which companies you browse. Based on feedback from people who have tried it over the next few months, we will see this service expand to other cities and other types of businesses available on WhatsApp.

Will Cathcart, responsible for WhatsApp on the inclusion of the yellow pages on the platform for the state of São Paulo, in 2021

The launch of this novelty occurs at the moment when the WhatsApp is increasingly presenting itself as a service for people to use to send messages to companies, in addition to friends and family, something that was already quite commonplace but that has intensified in recent years — especially with the advent of the COVID 19 pandemic.

In October 2020, the Meta said more than 175 million people around the world used WhatsApp to message business accounts every day. The service has also added other e-commerce-oriented functionality, such as support for in-app shopping carts.

Pix via WhatsApp? Perhaps!

The final part of this e-commerce interaction is in-app payments, which are not yet widely available on the platform. While Meta recently announced WhatsApp's "first end-to-end shopping experience" in India with the retailer Jio Mart earlier this year, after the launch of person-to-person payments in 2020, the rollout in Brazil has been slower.

O Central Bank of Brazil suspended the WhatsApp payments feature in 2020, shortly after its launch. So, despite getting its approval the following year for payments made in a timely manner, Reuters noted at the time that the Central Bank was not allowing payments to merchants. In April of this year, the Financial Times reported that Meta was also struggling to find payment partners for its merchant payment feature.

The press release of WhatsApp today says it is testing the commercial payments feature in Brazil "with various payment partners". WhatsApp's business-focused features are notable for being one of the few ways the service is monetized directly through the WhatsApp Business API.

It doesn't display ads in the same way as Meta's other top services, Instagram and Facebook, although businesses don't have to pay to be included in the new directory search feature. But a Meta executive said last year that ads are likely to be part of WhatsApp's business model "in one form or another" in the future.

While millions of businesses in Brazil use [WhatsApp] to chat, we don't make it easy for people to discover businesses or buy from them, so people end up having to use workarounds. The ultimate goal here is to make it so that you can find, message and buy from a business in the same WhatsApp chat.

Mark Zuckerberg's statement on the inclusion of the yellow pages for business searches on WhatsApp

See also other features

how to use the WhatsApp polls.

Pig iron: WhatsApp e The Verge.