It"s a common practice for businesses to have their own social media accounts that provide information and services related to their operations. In order to receive customer service, people often have to give personal information to these accounts. Since it"s crucial to verify their authenticity, all major social media platforms provide verification badges to business accounts; WhatsApp is the latest company to join the list.
WhatsApp is currently giving green verification badges to business accounts. Right now, only a small group of companies are selected to join its pilot verification program. Earlier this year, it was reported that the company might soon introduce mobile payment services to its platform; with the introduction of the verification feature, there is now one fewer hurdle in the way.
In addition to verification badges, WhatsApp is also introducing new business oriented enhancements. From now on, texts exchanged with a business account will have a special yellow text bubble around them; this will help users distinguish the conversations more easily. Moreover, these text messages will be immune to deletion. As a result, the integrity of the communication is ensured.
Facebook has been gradually bringing feature parity to all of its platforms. By adding verification badges to WhatsApp, Facebook is welcoming more businesses to its instant messaging platform. How this strategy plays out for the platform in the future is uncertain.