Finally WhatsApp Business has launched it’s WhatsApp Business API to the public. And this is where WhatsApp start charging businesses for sending marketing and customer service messages and the prices will vary from country to country.

https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api

Features you can do with normal WhatsApp Business,

  • Industry Information
    People can now easily identify your business by its category or industry and find out more information (i.e., hours of operation, website, location, description).
  • Send and Receive
    Enable two-way high value conversations with customers.
  • Message Templates
    Create message formats that are needed for sending notifications to users.

Check this post to learn how to create your WhatsApp Business account – https://www.bravonet.my/2018/06/02/connect-your-whatsapp-business-phone-number-to-your-facebook-page/

With WhatsApp Business API, basically you can integrate your existing CRM system with WhatsApp and communicate with your customers easily. But currently there is a catch…. not all the customers can use the API for time being as the WhatsApp team is very selective.

There are some service provides has started to provide the API integration service for their clients such as https://smooch.io/whatsapp/.

As for developers, Facebook already provide the comprehensive integration guide for WhatsApp Business API in their developer page https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/overview.

For our first glance on the API function list, it’s still in a very preliminary stage whereby there are a lot features are not included yet such as ChatBot, WhatsApp message blasting, etc. It’s rather looks like a customer service channel to businesses now.

Reference: https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api