Starting July 1: WhatsApp Business Rolls Out Major Pricing Changes
In a significant move for businesses worldwide, WhatsApp Business has announced a revamped pricing model for its WhatsApp Business Platform, set to take effect on July 1, 2025. The update introduces per-message billing, revised rates, and volume-based discounts for utility and authentication messages—aligning the platform with industry-standard practices seen on other messaging channels.
WhatsApp will now charge businesses per template message sent, rather than relying on broader session-based models. This means that if a company sends a single marketing and one utility message, they'll incur separate charges for each message type.
'This update aligns our pricing structure with other leading communication platforms that already operate on a per-message basis,' said a WhatsApp spokesperson.
Businesses can still respond to customer inquiries for free within a designated 24-hour customer service window, which resets every time a user sends a new message. During this period, companies can send both free-form and utility messages at no cost.
'This gives businesses more flexibility and choice when responding to customers, without worrying about added fees,' WhatsApp noted in its update.
To support growth, WhatsApp Business will roll out market-specific volume tiers for utility and authentication messages. As businesses scale up, they'll automatically benefit from reduced pricing in higher tiers.
'The more messages you send, the more you save,' WhatsApp stated. 'Volume-based pricing makes the platform more cost-effective for growing businesses.'
These volume tiers are category-specific and market-based. For instance, a business sending utility messages in Brazil would qualify for a separate pricing tier than one sending authentication messages in India. Predictable billing with per-message pricing
No cost for responses within the customer service window
Lower rates at higher volumes, incentivising platform growth
Alignment with global communication pricing standards
This pricing update signals WhatsApp's continued commitment to supporting business communication while ensuring cost-efficiency and scalability. Companies leveraging the WhatsApp Business Platform should review the new pricing structure closely to optimise their messaging strategies before the July 1 rollout.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gulf Insider
2 days ago
- Gulf Insider
Starting July 1: WhatsApp Business Rolls Out Major Pricing Changes
In a significant move for businesses worldwide, WhatsApp Business has announced a revamped pricing model for its WhatsApp Business Platform, set to take effect on July 1, 2025. The update introduces per-message billing, revised rates, and volume-based discounts for utility and authentication messages—aligning the platform with industry-standard practices seen on other messaging channels. WhatsApp will now charge businesses per template message sent, rather than relying on broader session-based models. This means that if a company sends a single marketing and one utility message, they'll incur separate charges for each message type. 'This update aligns our pricing structure with other leading communication platforms that already operate on a per-message basis,' said a WhatsApp spokesperson. Businesses can still respond to customer inquiries for free within a designated 24-hour customer service window, which resets every time a user sends a new message. During this period, companies can send both free-form and utility messages at no cost. 'This gives businesses more flexibility and choice when responding to customers, without worrying about added fees,' WhatsApp noted in its update. To support growth, WhatsApp Business will roll out market-specific volume tiers for utility and authentication messages. As businesses scale up, they'll automatically benefit from reduced pricing in higher tiers. 'The more messages you send, the more you save,' WhatsApp stated. 'Volume-based pricing makes the platform more cost-effective for growing businesses.' These volume tiers are category-specific and market-based. For instance, a business sending utility messages in Brazil would qualify for a separate pricing tier than one sending authentication messages in India. Predictable billing with per-message pricing No cost for responses within the customer service window Lower rates at higher volumes, incentivising platform growth Alignment with global communication pricing standards This pricing update signals WhatsApp's continued commitment to supporting business communication while ensuring cost-efficiency and scalability. Companies leveraging the WhatsApp Business Platform should review the new pricing structure closely to optimise their messaging strategies before the July 1 rollout.
Gulf Insider
21-05-2025
- Gulf Insider
How Hackers Can Control Your Phone With "Zero-Click" Attack
In 2025, most people are inseparable from their laptops and smartphones. With that familiarity has come a wariness of the dangers of clicking on unsolicited emails, SMS, or WhatsApp messages. But there is a growing menace called zero-click attacks, which have previously targeted only VIPs or the very wealthy because of their cost and sophistication. A zero-click attack is a cyberattack that hacks a device without the user clicking anything. It can happen just by receiving a message, call, or file. The attacker uses hidden flaws in apps or systems to take control of the device, with no action needed from the user and the user remains unaware of the attack. 'Although public awareness has increased recently, these attacks have steadily evolved over many years, becoming more frequent as smartphones and connected devices proliferated,' Nathan House, CEO of StationX, a UK-based cybersecurity training platform, told The Epoch Times. 'The key vulnerability is in the software, rather than the type of device, meaning any connected device with exploitable weaknesses could potentially be targeted,' he said. Aras Nazarovas, an information security researcher at Cybernews, told The Epoch Times why zero-click attacks usually target VIPs, rather than ordinary individuals. 'Since finding such zero-click exploits is difficult and expensive, most of the time such exploits are used to gain access to information from key figures, such as politicians or journalists in authoritarian regimes,' he said. 'They are often used in targeted campaigns. Using such exploits to steal money is rare.' In June 2024, the BBC reported that social media platform TikTok had admitted that a 'very limited' number of accounts, including those of media outlet CNN, had been compromised. While ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, did not confirm the nature of the hack, cybersecurity companies such as Kaspersky and Assured Intelligence suggested it stemmed from a zero-click exploit. 'The part that requires high levels of sophistication is finding bugs that allow such attacks and writing exploits for these bugs,' Nazarovas said. 'It has been a billion-dollar market for years, selling zero-click exploits and exploit chains. Some gray/dark market exploit brokers often offer $500,000 to $1 million for such exploit chains for popular devices and apps.' Nazarovas added that while ordinary users have been hit in the past by zero-click 'drive-by' attacks. These are attacks that emerge after the unintentional installation of malicious software onto a device, often without the user even realizing it. They have become more infrequent with the growing gray market for such exploits. House said zero-click exploits often seek out vulnerabilities in software and apps that are expensive to discover, which means the perpetrators are usually 'nation-state actors or highly-funded groups.' Although there have been recent innovations in AI that have made certain cyber crimes, such as voice-cloning or vishing, more prevalent, Nazarovas says there is no evidence yet that it has increased the risk from zero-click attacks. House said people could use AI to 'write zero-click exploit chains for people who would have otherwise lacked the time, experience, or knowledge to be able to discover and write such exploits.' But, he said, the increase in zero-click attacks in recent years, 'stems mainly from expanded spyware markets and greater availability of sophisticated exploits, rather than directly from AI-driven techniques.' He said zero-click attacks have existed for more than a decade, the most infamous of which was the Pegasus spyware affair. In July 2021, The Guardian and 16 other media outlets published a series of articles, alleging that foreign governments used the Israeli-based NSO Group's Pegasus software to surveil at least 180 journalists and numerous other targets around the world. Alleged targets of Pegasus surveillance included French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, and Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi, who was slain in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. In a statement at the time, NSO Group said, 'As NSO has previously stated, our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.' On May 6, a California jury awarded WhatsApp's parent company, Meta, $444,719 in compensatory damages and $167.3 million in punitive damages, in a privacy case against NSO Group. The WhatsApp complaint was focused on the Pegasus spyware, which, according to the lawsuit, was developed 'to be remotely installed and enable the remote access and control of information—including calls, messages, and location—on mobile devices using the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry operating systems.' 'While ordinary users can occasionally become collateral targets, attackers generally reserve these costly exploits for individuals whose information is especially valuable or sensitive,' Nazarovas said. According to Nazarovas, corporations offer hackers 'bug bounties' to incentivize them to find these exploits and report them to the company, rather than selling them to a broker who then sells them on to parties who use them illegally. Read the rest here… Also read: Kuwaiti Jailed For 6 Months Over Hacking Wife's Mobile Phone
Daily Tribune
04-05-2025
- Daily Tribune
Meta fighting Nigerian fines, warns could shut Facebook, Instagram
AFP | Lagos Meta yesterday vowed to fight Nigerian fines for various consumer data violations as the US tech giant reportedly threatened to cut off Facebook and Instagram in Africa's most populous country. The social media juggernaut last week lost its latest legal bid when a Nigerian tribunal rejected its appeal against a $220 million fine imposed by the country's consumer protection agency, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). In appeals court papers cited by various media, including the BBC and The Africa Report, Meta said it 'may be forced to effectively shut down the Facebook and Instagram services in Nigeria in order to mitigate the risk of enforcement measures'. Meta's social media platforms -- WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram -- are among the most popular in the country. Meta has until the end of June to pay the fine, Nigerian media reported.
