While many of us have been using WhatsApp for the longest time without paying a single cent, some users do need pay for the app though which costs USD 0.99 (about RM 4.36) per year. If you are one of them, it is now time to say farewell to the annual fee as the popular multi-plaform messaging service has announced that it will no longer charges such fee to users.
RM 5 per year might sounds quite affordable for a service that connects almost one billion users throughout the world but WhatsApp reckoned that the approach doesn’t work quite well. This is because that the company learned that many of its users don’t have access to debit or credit card and it doesn’t want such users to worry over losing contacts with friends and families through WhatsApp due to the subscription fee.
Despite not having annual subscription fee anymore, WhatsApp will continue to be available without third-party ads. Instead, the company will be working on tools that allows users and businesses or organizations to communicate directly with each other through WhatsApp starting this year.
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Some example given by the company is how an airline communicate to customers regarding a delayed flight and when a bank contacts its customer regarding a suspicious transaction which were usually done through text messages and phone calls. The tools that WhatApp is working on will apparently make these type of communications easier to perform on its service while continue to be free of third-party ads and spam.
Meanwhile, the company is currently working to remove the annual subscription free from various versions of its app as we speak. Users can expect WhatsApp to be completely free of charge within the next few weeks.
(Source: WhatsApp)
