Ever thought just how a messaging app can make money whilst giving free texting and calling? WhatsApp users in India may be surprised to learn that there are much more to messaging apps than communicating. Here's how: by providing services such as digital payments, online shopping and content.
China's WeChat is just about the ultimate example of the great potential which messaging apps hold. With well over 900 million monthly active users, WeChat enables them to do everything from messaging, buying grocery, hailing cabs, buying online food and also offline payments at restaurants - all of this without having to go to another app. These types of services not merely provide the company incredible customer stickiness, they also create a remarkable revenue model.
At this point, WeChat's competition outside China including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber and Line are behind the curve on this front, even though some have started on the way to becoming larger platforms. "The reason chat apps are expanding beyond communications is to build a lasting monetisation strategy," said Neha Dharia, a senior analyst with a focus on messaging at London-based research firm Ovum. "Chat apps are moving from being just a provider of communication tools chat, voice and video) to becoming a platform for the exchange of services, payment mechanisms and content consumption."
WhatsApp, the largest messaging app in the world with 1.3 billion every month active users, introduced a business version in India very early this week. "Based on research, we all know that people are utilizing WhatsApp to speak to businesses.
make business messaging less difficult for folks and more efficient for businesses," a WhatsApp representative said in respond to ET's questions. Whatsapp Business is a separate app from Whatsapp Messenger, aimed mostly at giving a direct communicating platform to small enterprises, many of who may be using WhatsApp already.

While Whatsapp has maintained the service free, it may broaden it to larger businesses with added features for example analytics, from which it may well charge a usage fee at a later stage, thus developing a revenue model, segment watchers said. App Alternatives is targeted at raising subscriber connect that it can make use of for future monetization of their other services. The larger agenda - and a more critical one - for these businesses is to get active users to invest more time on the app or services as well as make it viable for profit generation, based on experts.
"Each and every technology company is competing for consumer stickiness, interaction and time invested on the app, and in order to keep them in the app's ecosystem they are widening themselves to become platforms. Merely being messaging applications that offer free services certainly won't be a solid revenuegeneration model," said Jayanth Kolla, founder of Bengaluru-based research firm Convergence Catalyst.