Latest Report Dives Deep into Tech Giant WhatsApp's Revenue Model

One of Whatsapp's most competitive features is its highly-touted default end-to-end message encryption. It uses WhatsApp’s powerful computer servers, housed in various data centres around the world. 

It’s not a cheap operation, and yet individual users do not pay any cash to use it. The platform has nearly three billion users worldwide.

So how does WhatsApp generate revenue?

Admittedly, it helps that WhatsApp has a massive parent company behind it – Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram as well.

Individual, personal WhatsApp accounts are free because WhatsApp makes money from corporate customers wanting to communicate with end users. 

Since last year firms have been able to set up channels for free on WhatsApp, so they can send out messages to be read by all who choose to subscribe.

But what theese firms pay a premium for is access to interactions with individual customers via the app, both conversational and transactional.

"Our vision, if we get all of this right, is a business and a customer should be able to get things done right in a chat thread,” says Nikila Srinivasan, vice president of business messaging at Meta.

Businesses can also now choose to pay for a link that launches a new WhatsApp chat straight from an online ad on Facebook or Instagram to a personal account. Ms Srinivasan says this alone is now worth “several billions of dollars” to the tech giant.

Other messaging apps have gone down different routes.

Signal, a platform hailed for its message security protocols which have become industry-standard, is a non-profit organisation. It says it does not take money from investors (unlike the Telegram app, which relies on them).

Instead, it runs on donations – which include a $50m (£38m) injection of cash from Brian Acton, one of the co-founders of WhatsApp, in 2018.