WhatsApp in-app shopping through India’s JioMart

WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Meta Platforms Inc. is rolling out a shopping product in India. This will be the first time users will be able to browse and purchase products without leaving the app, Bloomberg says.

WhatsApp unveiled the new tool alongside JioMart, part of Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jio Platforms. This is an Indian tech company that Meta invested almost $6 billion into in early 2020. The new feature lets users in India shop for products from JioMart and pay for them directly within the app. People could previously browse products via WhatsApp, but had to leave the service to finish the transaction.

A full WhatsApp shopping experience has been a longtime goal for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social networking giant paid $22 billion to acquire WhatsApp in 2014. The service is still a small part of Meta’s overall business.

The app now makes money by charging some businesses to message customers and by selling click-to-message ads, which are ads that appear in users’ Facebook or Instagram feeds and then kick them into a private chat with a business once they’re clicked. Those ads already bring in billions of dollars per year across all Meta’s apps.

Zuckerberg is targeting a much larger business opportunity for WhatsApp related to commerce and payments, especially in emerging markets where the app is popular like India and Brazil. The CEO has spoken about business messaging on almost every Meta earnings call in the past few years, pitching the idea as a complementary business line to the company’s existing advertising business.

Part of the struggle for Meta has been related to payments regulation. The company tested payments in India for years before getting formal government approval in 2020 to expand the test into a full-blown feature.

JioMart is competing with Walmart Inc.-controlled Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc. for a bigger piece of India’s growing online retail market. Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani runs the online grocery push. A partnership with WhatsApp could just give it a much-needed boost.

A Meta spokesperson said the company hopes to expand in India to team up with more businesses. It also aims to bring this shopping tool to other countries.