WhatsApp will soon fulfil a requirement of the EU’s new Digital Services Act to communicate with other global messaging platforms, syncing chat conversations from third-party app users.
Whilst enabling interoperability between platforms is the next step for innovation, big providers such as WhatsApp, and Meta Group will remain separate entities. The user will not necessarily be aware of other platforms their friends and family use to send messages. The EU supports this whilst apps have been working to bolster interoperability with other services.
WhatsApp has notified their users about the integration of third-party app users, which will create a separate inbox for other messages.
It will still take time to finalise agreements with other platforms to embed their services and users. Users are likely to receive further updates from WhatsApp when third-party chats will appear in the app.
The full proposal will be available in March and commence a two month period when it must be implemented.
WhatsApp’s two billion users will be significantly boosted with a large proportion of global mobile users using messaging apps, which is projected to grow to 3.51 billion by 2025. Facebook Messenger, part of the Meta empire, has approximately 931 million monthly users. In addition, Snapchat has around 635 million users.
It is unclear if WhatsApp’s changes will be rolled out outside the EU.
Adapting a system to enhance secure encryption and decryption for additional data and finetuning security and privacy will “raise many thorny questions and practical implementation compromises” for providers.
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