WhatsApp as the center of everything. If you think you’re saturated with this app and its dreaded groups, know that we’re just looking at the tip of the iceberg of all its potential. In a short time, you will be able to make the purchase from WhatsApp and without leaving the application. A fiction? Keep reading.
Meta has announced with much fanfare the agreement between WhatsApp and the Indian supermarket chain Jiomart, through which any citizen of that country can make the purchase of all the products of the supermarket without leaving the app, including paying for the products .
One more conversation…
Do not think of any type of plug-in or additional development to the platform: all management is carried out as if it were just another conversation on WhatsApp, only now, on the other side, users will find a button managed by artificial intelligence that will be proposing products.
The client will add them to the shopping cart —we insist, everything within the application and its interface— and when he considers that he has finished, he will consider it finished. At that point, the system will confirm the address and offer various forms of payment, including payment within WhatsApp (with your own wallet).
Facilitate digitization for those who do not even have internet
If you have come this far and you have not been too surprised by the news, it means that you are reading it with ‘Western’ eyes: it is not just another online shopping platform, but allowing it to citizens who do not even have internet access .
It should be remembered that India is a huge country, both in terms of size and population, and the infrastructures do not reach all the extremes of its geography. As has happened in African countries, the first contact with the outside world for many Indians comes through the mobile.
And the agreement has been relevant enough for Mark Zuckerberg himself to announce it on his Facebook wall. This alliance is based on an undeniable fact: practically the entire population has a mobile phone.
This device has become the common denominator of communications on the planet, and for this reason, far from waiting for the population to have Internet access via fiber and a computer, they have adapted the shopping basket to the most widespread hardware: cell phone.
Using WhatsApp to make the purchase also eliminates the possible barriers of use for users who do not have an internet connection: it is not necessary to do anything more than start a conversation on WhatsApp to make the purchase; the mobile number acts as a ‘passport’ and simplifies the process.
The million dollar question is, logically, when will we see this possibility in the West, something that no one, right now, has an answer to. But the fact that it is already operating in a large market such as India indicates that it is a matter of time.