WhatsApp gets rid of $1 annual subscription fee

Until now WhatsApp has been free for the the first year and charged $1 to continue using it. Now, in an effort to remove the barriers some users faced in using the service, Facebook owned-messaging service WhatsApp announced that it is dropping the service’s  annual subscription fee.

WhatsApp said the subscription fee has harmed growth in developing countries, where the app has become hugely popular. Its worth noting that WhatsApp has always been free in many developing countries including India. 

"For many years, we’ve asked some people to pay a fee for using WhatsApp after their first year. As we’ve grown, we’ve found that this approach hasn’t worked well. Many WhatsApp users don’t have a debit or credit card number and they worried they’d lose access to their friends and family after their first year. So over the next several weeks, we’ll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service." said WhatsApp in a Blog post.

It also said that it will not introduce third-party apps for revenues, instead it will start testing tools so that users can use the messaging service to communicate with businesses and organization such as banks or other utility services. For example, know if your recent transactions were fraudulent or chat with an airline to ask about a delayed flight.

WhatsApp, bought by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, is currently the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 900 million monthly active users, as of September 2015.