Meta announced, this Thursday (17), Launch of store search tool by category on WhatsAppThe 🇧🇷 Business Guide was being tested in São Paulo (SP) and will be expanded to the entire Brazil, the first country to receive the innovation.
This functionality allows users to search for vendor contacts by name or category. It is searched by location, i.e. the app lists businesses closest to the customer.
In the Special tab, it is possible to search in categories such as “Shopping and Retail”, “Food & Beverage”, “Education”, “Hotel and Accommodation”, “Travel and Transportation”, “Real Estate”, “Beauty, Cosmetics”. and Maintenance”, “Advertising/Marketing” and much more.
Within each category there are subcategories. A person looking for food close to home can choose “Food and Drinks”, “Restaurants” and “Steakhouse”, “Fried Chicken”, “Pizzeria”, “Chinese Restaurant” and many more.
Although focused on small local businesses, the system lists service providers and product vendors of all sizes as long as they use WhatsApp.
According to Meta, Business Directory ensures that users do not need to search for a phone number on websites or save a number in their contacts.
Chat app payments
The holding company that owns Facebook and Instagram also announced today what consumers can do soon. Completing a purchase of a product or paying for a service from within WhatsApp itself🇧🇷
The Conversations app is testing the payment service for companies with brands like Cielo, Fiserv, Getnet, Mercado Pago, and Rede. Guilherme Horn, head of WhatsApp Latin America, explained that the company’s partners have already carried out the technical integration necessary for the service to work.
“The Peer-to-Person payment feature in WhatsApp was developed as an open platform with the participation of several Brazilian companies. “We are excited to announce partners who are in production testing with us so that we can bring functionality to businesses and consumers as soon as possible after closing deals and obtaining regulatory approval,” Horn said.
For now, it has not yet been announced when the innovation will be available to customers. However, the brand announced that Brazilians will be able to pay via WhatsApp using Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards issued by participating banks.
Source: Tec Mundo
