WhatsApp’s new in-app feature ‘Carts’ is set to make online shopping easier for its 2 billion user base. Small e-commerce start-ups are real concerned.
Just in time for the holiday season, WhatsApp has this week announced plans to roll out a new in-app shopping feature called Carts which allows buyers to group multiple purchases into a single message. Tech really is all about convenience these days.
Those who keep up with social tech will be well aware that the instant messaging service already had an e-commerce arm called ‘Catalogs.’ Launching back in 2019, this update basically became the digital storefront for businesses to showcase their goods in one scrollable products page. Carts is about to take that principle and simplify the purchasing process even further for shoppers on WhatsApp by grouping huge orders into just one message.
WhatsApp’s popularity as a shopping service has taken the industry by surprise, with 175 million people using the Catalogs service every day as of late October. Add to that the addition of Carts and WhatsApp is all but set to rival Amazon, Walmart, and other key players of e-commerce for the attention of emerging markets like India.
Speaking of India, the nation currently represents WhatsApp’s biggest market by users, and one of its big emerging e-commerce start-ups DealShare – which just turned a fiscal profit of $21 million in a new financing round – actually earned its chops on WhatsApp before going solo.