WhatsApp hits 1 billion monthly active user mark

In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook which now owns popular messaging app WhatsApp, announced that the messenger now has over 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide:

“WhatsApp’s community has more than doubled since joining Facebook. We’ve added the ability for you to call loved ones far away. We’ve dropped the subscription fee and made WhatsApp completely free. Next, we’re going to work to connect more people around the world and make it easier to communicate with businesses. 
There are only a few services that connect more than a billion people. This milestone is an important step towards connecting the entire world.”

He congratulated Jan Koum (CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp) and Brian Acton (co-founder of WhatsApp) on achieving the milestone.

This is huge for an app that makes no revenue as it sells no ads. they made some income from their subscription plans but since scrapping them off, how will they make any money?

All we know is WhatsApp plans to “test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight.”

We suspect they will charge businesses to use their app as a B2C communication channel but that hasn’t been confirmed.