WhatsApp Business is free to download and was built with the small business owner in mind. The app makes it easy to personally connect with your customers, highlight your products and services, and answer their questions throughout their shopping experience. Create a catalog to showcase your products and services and use special tools to automate, sort and quickly respond to messages.
If you have separate business and personal phone numbers, you can have both WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Messenger installed on the same phone, and register them with different numbers.
In addition to the features available in WhatsApp Messenger, WhatsApp Business includes:
- Business Profile: Create a profile for your business to help your customers find valuable information --- like your website, location, or contact information.
- Business Messaging Tools: Be more responsive to your customers by using Away messages to indicate when you're away or Greeting message to send your customers an introductory message when they first message you.
- Landline/Fixed Number Support: You can use WhatsApp Business with a landline (or fixed) phone number and your customers can message you on that number. During verification, select the "Call me" option to receive the code over a phone call.
- Run Both WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business: You can use both WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Messenger on the same phone, but each app must have its own unique phone number.
- WhatsApp Web: You can more efficiently respond to your customers right from your computer's browser.
WhatsApp Business is built on top of WhatsApp Messenger and includes all the features that you rely on, such as the ability to send multimedia, free calls*, free international messaging*, group chat, offline messages, and much more.
What's New
It's time to reserve your WhatsApp username
When someone new walks into your life – a classmate, a neighbor, someone you meet at an event – sharing a phone number can feel like a big step. That's because a phone number is personal and it's tied to so many parts of your life. Sometimes you just want to chat without handing over your digits.
This is also true for group conversations. You want to join the parent chat for the soccer team but you're not ready to give your phone number to people you've never met.
That's why we're introducing usernames for WhatsApp. Starting this week, you can reserve a username to use later this year when we launch this feature. With over three billion people on WhatsApp a lot of names overlap, which is why we're opening reservations early so everyone has the opportunity to select the username that matters to them.
For most people, choosing a WhatsApp username should be something unique that only people you want to contact you will know. If you need help picking one, we have a username generator to make one work just for you.
We also know that some people like creators, small businesses, and organizations may want to maintain a consistent presence online. For them, we reserved an option to claim their existing Instagram or Facebook username on WhatsApp.
Usernames are our latest step to make WhatsApp even more private. There's no directory to browse and no suggestions – people will need to know your exact username to contact you for the first time. To help control who can reach you on WhatsApp with your username, we've built an optional username key that others will need to know to message you.
Once we launch usernames, when you message a person or business for the first time they will no longer see your phone number, if you enabled your username.
Reserving your optional username takes just a few seconds on the latest version of WhatsApp – go to Settings > Account > Username.
We'll be rolling out usernames gradually over the coming months and will notify you in WhatsApp when they're available in your country.
Introducing Incognito Chat with Meta AI: A completely private way to chat with AI
Chatting with AI has quickly become a critical part of how people get information and ask important questions. And many of these questions can be deeply sensitive, or include situations where people are including private financial, personal, health or work data with their questions.
Ten years ago we brought the world end-to-end encryption and now we are extending this privacy to chats with Meta AI.
Today we're launching Incognito Chat with Meta AI, a new way to have completely private conversations with AI. Built on top of our Private Processing technology, Incognito Chat lets you talk to Meta AI in a way that is invisible to anyone else.
Other apps have introduced incognito-style modes, but they can still see the questions coming in and the answers going out. Incognito Chat with Meta AI is truly private – no one can read your conversation, not even us.
Since we started exploring bringing AI to WhatsApp, we've been focused on how to deliver this power privately, at a global scale.
When you start an Incognito Chat with Meta AI, you're creating a private, temporary conversation that only you can see. Your messages are processed in a secure environment that even Meta cannot access. Your conversations are not saved and by default, your messages disappear – giving you a space to think and explore ideas without anyone watching.
We believe this private way of chatting has potential to be part of several ways people chat with AI on WhatsApp. In the coming months, we'll also introduce Side Chat protected by Private Processing. Side Chat with Meta AI will give you private help with any chat, with context of what's being discussed, without disrupting the main conversation.
We remain committed to delivering privacy for the world. Incognito Chat with Meta AI is rolling out on WhatsApp and the Meta AI app over the coming months. You can learn more about how Incognito Chat with Meta AI works here.
