Last Thursday Facebook announced the interest of to allow WhatsApp users to make purchases without ever leaving the application . The company is taking steps to increase the revenues from the messaging service by combining the e-commerce infrastructure between all the proprietary apps, trying to make the investment of 19 billions of dollars made for the acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014.

Through the new e-commerce strategy WhatsApp will allow companies to sell products within the app through Facebook Shops , an online store launched in May to offer a shopping experience unified across Facebook apps. The company will also enter the cloud computing sector, offering companies that use the services offered by the messaging app the ability to store messages on Facebook’s servers.

A huge e-commerce platform directly on WhatsApp

Matt Idema, Chief Operating Officer of WhatsApp, stated that the purchase tool will allow companies to connect companies with new potential customers, and will be distributed already by the end of 2020, while the message hosting service will be available in 2021. Idema also stated that WhatsApp will offer the hosting service for free to try to attract new corporate customers, who however they will be charged from 0, 005 $ to 0, 09 $ per message distributed through the platform.

At the moment, WhatsApp’s customer base is relatively sparse, with a few tens of thousands of businesses worldwide, while tens of millions use the most limited free tools aimed at small businesses. In total, more than 175 millions of people interact with a company every day on WhatsApp, Idema said: “Revenue is quite meager today, compared to Facebook in general, but we think the opportunity is pretty big,” his words.