Starting October 1, WhatsApp is changing the rules for business accounts: companies will have to pay for messages sent to customers through the WhatsApp Business Platform. In Kazakhstan, the rate will be about $0.018, or roughly 8 tenge per message, according to infohub.kz.
Each business number will receive 1,000 free messages per month. Once that limit is used up, companies will start paying for further messages. For example, if a company sends 10,000 such messages in a month, it will have to pay for 9,000 of them. That works out to about $162, or roughly 72,000 tenge.
Customers will not have to pay for messages. The changes apply specifically to businesses that use the WhatsApp Business Platform and services for automated messaging, CRM, chatbots and other tools.
This is particularly relevant for Kazakhstan. WhatsApp Business is used here not only by large companies but also by small entrepreneurs, shops, craftspeople and other professionals. Moreover, many of them actively use bulk messaging.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle reported that WhatsApp rolled out a major update to group chats.