“Effective November 1, 2024 – We are making service conversations free,” Meta, which owns WhatsApp, said on its website.
Until now, service messages – such as customer queries on order status, flight ticket rescheduling, etc. – on WhatsApp were charged Rs 0.25 in India. SMS costs Rs 0.12-0.15, while Google’s RCS (rich communication services) is priced Rs 0.20-0.25.
In India’s enterprise messaging market worth around Rs2,500 crore, traditional SMS still commands an about 90% volume share at 55-60 billion texts per month, according to industry estimates. WhatsApp has a 30% value share.
The latest move is the second rate cut announced by WhatsApp in six months.
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But WhatsApp’s rate cuts have not been able to move the needle for the platform to make major volume market share gains, according to experts. This is partly because of regulations that mandate banks and government departments to use SMS for all transactional messages.
“We occasionally make adjustments to our offerings to better reflect the ways in which the service is used and the types of information people are choosing to receive,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
According to research firm Gartner, basic messaging channels in India such as SMS are set to grow at an annual rate of 12%, while advanced channels including RCS and WhatsApp will grow at 58% – faster than in any other region in the world.
The latest move to make service messaging free though could help WhatsApp attract two-way conversations, allows brands to spend on click-to-WhatsApp ads on other Meta platforms and generate user-stickiness amid AI adoption.
“User-initiated message journeys are still not very prevalent as it’s not easy for consumers to identify the brand’s channel where they need to send the message,” said Nitin Singhal, managing director at communications company Sinch India. As much as 90% of conversations are initiated by businesses because discoverability is a challenge, he said.
