WhatsApp drops $1 annual subscription fee

BANGALORE: WhatsApp founder and CEO Jan Koum has announced that the company was dropping the messaging app’s annual subscription fee, allowing millions of users to chat for free.

In a conference, the company said that charging the fee after one free year hasn’t worked well as many users don’t have a credit or debit card and are afraid of losing the service when it’s time to renew. WhatsApp has been free for the first year and 99 cents for additional years.

“It really doesn’t work that well, we just don’t want people to think at some point their communication to the world will be cut off,” Koum said at the DLD conference in Germany yesterday.

It will stop charging subscription fees immediately but it will likely be a few weeks before the payments infrastructure is completely out of all versions of the app.

It also pledged not to introduce advertisements and instead hopes to find a way to make firms pay to connect with customers using the app. “As far as we talk about a new business model, WhatsApp will explore and find ways to reach its customers,” he said.

Koum said that the company wants to experiment with different approaches but added that the goal is to avoid spam and unwanted advertising.