WhatsApp Is Finally Inviting Businesses Onto Its Massive Network This Year

WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum. As it closes in on 1 billion active users, Koum said today that WhatsApp will start inviting businesses onto its sprawling network this year. (Photo: Robert Gallagher for Forbes)

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum just dropped several pieces of big news about his messaging giant today during a rare appearance at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany.

Here’s the roundup of news, and you can skip to No. 3 for the meaty stuff:

1) WhatsApp is just days away from reaching 1 billion active users: it’s currently got 990 million, Koum said today. He was hoping for 10 million more before his appearance but you can’t have everything. The company has previously said it was growing by about 1 million users a day.

2) WhatsApp is going totally free, dropping the 99 cent subscription that it applied to certain users after a year of free use. Note that WhatsApp never made much money from this; only around $20 million in 2013 revenue to help cover costs. Up until 2014, when Facebook FB -4.26% bought WhatsApp in a landmark $19 billion deal (950 times its 2013 revenue), WhatsApp was only charging the fee in a handful of countries like the United States and United Kingdom, where most people had credit cards and were more likely to pay for things on their mobile phones. Elsewhere like the Netherlands, WhatsApp dropped the fee because while half the country used the app, mobile payments were still uncommon. Now that WhatsApp has all costs covered and then some thanks to Facebook’s tutelage, it can afford to drop the subscription.

3) Since its acquisition by Facebook, WhatsApp has batted away questions about justifying its $19 billion price tag by making more money, saying it needed to focus on growing its user base. During deal talks, Zuckerberg had told WhatsApp’s founders that he’d give them the freedom to focus on growth alone for the first couple of years under Facebook. But that was two years ago, and now that it’s about to hit 1 billion users (equal to one-seventh of the world’s population) WhatsApp is finally going to start inviting businesses onto the network and will probably trial new ways of charging them.

Businesses on Facebook was the most important part of Koum’s announcement today, and WhatsApp marked the news with a rare blog post: