WhatsApp: The Battle to Own the Interface

Image credit: Created with Artlist AI under licence.

For years, WhatsApp has been seen as a messaging tool: fast, direct, private and almost universally used. It started as an app for talking to family and friends. Over time, it became a natural channel for interacting with businesses — asking for information, booking an appointment, following up on an order or getting customer support.

But Meta’s latest moves point to something far more ambitious.

WhatsApp no longer wants to be just a B2C messaging tool. Meta appears to be building a new service layer on mobile: conversation, artificial intelligence, automation, commerce, payments, credit and customer support — all within a single interface.

Meta’s investment in the Indian fintech CRED, together with the appointment of its founder, Kunal Shah, as the new global head of WhatsApp, reinforces this interpretation. This is not just a financial transaction. It is a strategic move to turn WhatsApp into a transactional infrastructure.

The question is no longer whether businesses should be on WhatsApp. The question is how much of the customer relationship will ultimately move through WhatsApp.

Meta’s investment in CRED

Meta has invested $900 million in CRED, an Indian fintech valued at $4.5 billion. But CRED is not just another mass-market wallet. It is a platform built around high-credit-quality users, originally focused on credit card payments, rewards, lending, insurance and personal financial management.

According to Reuters, CRED has 17 million monthly users, processes more than 40% of credit card payments in India and manages a $2.5 billion loan book. As part of the deal, Kunal Shah is stepping down as CEO of CRED to take on the global leadership of WhatsApp.

Meta is not simply hiring an executive. It is bringing in someone who has built a consumer financial product in one of the world’s most complex, competitive and mobile-first digital markets.

India is also the perfect testing ground for this move:

• WhatsApp has massive penetration.

• Mobile is the primary gateway to many digital services.

• Instant payments through UPI are already part of everyday life.

• SMEs are already using WhatsApp as a commercial channel.

• Conversational commerce is embedded in daily behaviour.

• Fintech competition is intense, with players such as PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm.

Meta will hold a minority stake in CRED and, according to published reports, will not have access to the fintech’s customer data. So this does not look like a straightforward play for financial data. It looks more like a combination of strategic investment, market learning, talent acquisition, product insight and positioning.

Meta wants to understand how financial trust is built inside a mobile ecosystem that people use every day.

WhatsApp as a Conversational Operating System

The real strategic value of WhatsApp is not just its more than 3 billion monthly users. It lies in the fact that many decisions already start inside a conversation.

A customer asks about a product.

Someone books an appointment.

A user requests information about a service.

A candidate replies to a job offer.

A shop sends a quote.

A company resolves an issue.

A brand recovers an abandoned basket.

An insurer asks for documentation.

A fintech offers financing at the point of purchase.

Until now, WhatsApp was the channel where the conversation started. Meta’s goal seems to be to make it the place where it also gets resolved.

And for that to happen, Meta’s ecosystem needs to evolve in several key areas.

The first is the WhatsApp Business Platform, which allows companies to scale their messaging, automate conversations, send notifications, manage campaigns and connect WhatsApp to their internal systems.

The second is WhatsApp Flows, which makes it possible to build forms and structured experiences directly inside the chat — bookings, requests, user registration, quotes, feedback, data collection or onboarding processes.

The third is AI agents. Meta Business Agent can answer questions, recommend products, book appointments, qualify leads, close sales and hand over to a human team member when the conversation calls for it. Meta says that more than one million businesses are already using agents on WhatsApp and Messenger, and that there are over one billion active daily conversation threads between people and businesses across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.

The fourth is monetisation. WhatsApp Business Platform already operates on a pricing model based on delivered messages, with categories such as marketing, utility, authentication and service. In other words, WhatsApp is no longer just a free messaging app. It is becoming a business infrastructure with an increasingly sophisticated economic model.

The fifth is the financial layer: payments, credit, contextual financing, insurance, rewards and other value-added services.

With this ecosystem, Meta wants WhatsApp to move beyond being a channel and become a platform.

The WeChat Mirror

The comparison with WeChat is inevitable.

WeChat proved in China that a messaging app could become a super app: payments, commerce, mini-programmes, bookings, public services, content, customer support and social interaction, all within a single environment.

Tencent’s figures help illustrate the scale of the model: Weixin Pay processes more than one billion commercial transactions every day, while Mini Programs generate RMB 8 trillion in GMV. In other words, WeChat is not just a communication app. It is an economic infrastructure.

Meta appears to be aiming for a similar logic: turning WhatsApp into an interface where users can chat, discover, buy, pay, get support and come back to buy again.

That said, there is one major difference between the two models: the West is not China.

China had a very specific set of conditions: a weaker legacy of card payments, mass adoption of QR codes, a rapid leap from cash to mobile, broad acceptance of closed ecosystems and a very different regulatory framework.

In Europe and the United States, the context is very different:

• Banks still have a strong relationship with their customers.

• Cards remain the dominant payment method.

• Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Revolut, Bizum, Zelle and Venmo already occupy well-established positions.

• Regulation around data, competition and payments is far more restrictive.

• There is greater sensitivity around the concentration of power in big tech companies.

• Apple and Google control the app stores and a significant part of the mobile experience.

WhatsApp may become a modular pseudo-super app, but replicating the WeChat effect in the West will not be easy.

Controlling the Interface Before the Transaction

The real prize lies in owning the interface where user intent begins.

Before we buy, we ask.

Before we book, we check.

Before we sign up, we compare.

Before we pay, we need trust.

Before we complain, we look for an answer.

Before we make a decision, we have a conversation.

If Meta controls that conversation, it can capture a much larger share of the commercial funnel.

In the traditional model, a business had to drive users to its website, app, form or online store. In the conversational model, part of that experience can move to where the user already is: WhatsApp.

This radically reduces friction.

No app to install.

No password to remember.

No complex website to navigate.

No phone call required.

No need to wait for someone to reply manually.

An agent can respond, qualify, recommend, collect data, trigger a flow, hand over to a human, generate an order and close a sale.

This is where the real opportunity lies: WhatsApp as an operational layer for sales, customer support and service.

What This Means for the App Ecosystem Around WhatsApp

Over the past few years, a whole ecosystem of companies has emerged around the WhatsApp Business API.

But if Meta starts offering more native capabilities around inbox management, automation, AI, Flows, catalogues, campaigns, discovery and reporting, part of the value these companies used to provide could become commoditised.

This is the core risk for intermediaries built on top of someone else’s platform: when the platform moves up the value chain, it can absorb part of the work its partners used to do.

Platforms of this kind will need to defend their position by building layers that are harder to replicate:

• Deep integrations with CRM, ERP and e-commerce systems.

• Industry-specific expertise.

• Advanced business analytics.

• Multichannel orchestration.

• Data governance.

• Compliance.

• Managed services.

• Conversational journey design.

• Advanced agent personalisation.

• Operational knowledge of the customer.

The strategic question for any Wati-like company is simple:

If Meta offers a free or low-cost agent tomorrow that can sell, support and qualify customers on WhatsApp, what differentiated value do I still bring?

Those with a clear answer will survive. Those that are merely a wrapper around the WhatsApp API will face a much tougher road.

The Consumer Comes Out on Top

For consumers, the potential is clear.

A well-designed WhatsApp experience can reduce friction, save time and make services more accessible — services that today are scattered across websites, apps, forms, phone calls and emails.

Users can ask for information, get an immediate response, send documentation, make a booking, pay, change an appointment or resolve an issue without leaving the chat.

For many SMEs, this could also be an opportunity. Not every business can afford an app, an advanced CRM or a 24/7 support team. If WhatsApp gives them easy-to-activate AI and automation tools, they can improve their service and sell more with fewer resources.

But the other side of the equation matters too.

WhatsApp is perceived as an intimate space. If it becomes crowded with bots, campaigns, promotions, recommendations, payments and credit offers, it could damage part of the trust that made it valuable in the first place.

The risks are clear:

• More commercial spam.

• More advertising pressure in a personal space.

• Greater dependence on Meta.

• Less diversity across channels.

• More difficulty telling whether you are speaking to a person or an AI agent.

• Greater exposure to fraud and impersonation.

• Financial decisions made too easily.

• Potential exclusion of people who do not want to use WhatsApp, or cannot use it.

The financial layer is particularly sensitive. Helping someone book an appointment through a messaging app is one thing. Starting to offer credit, financing or financial products is something very different.

The same low friction that makes selling easier can become a problem if it encourages impulsive consumption or poorly considered borrowing decisions.

The Risk of Fraud

The more transactional WhatsApp becomes, the more attractive it will be to fraudsters.

This is already happening today. Messaging scams, fake job offers, brand impersonation, investment fraud, malicious links and fake promotions are all growing problems.

Meta says it removed more than 159 million fraudulent ads in 2025 and rolled out new anti-fraud tools across WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger. But that figure also shows the scale of the problem.

If WhatsApp becomes a channel for payments, credit, jobs, documentation or contracts, security will not be an add-on. It will have to sit at the very core of the product.

Meta will have to solve a very complex tension:

• It wants WhatsApp to be an open platform for millions of businesses.

• It wants to automate conversations with AI.

• It wants to monetise messages and services.

• It wants to move into payments and fintech.

• But it also needs to protect user trust.

Without trust, there is no transaction. Without security, there is no fintech. Without spam control, WhatsApp risks losing its value as a channel.

What This Means for Western Markets

In markets such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and much of Latin America, the fit is far more natural. WhatsApp is already part of the everyday infrastructure for relationships, commerce and service. Many SMEs already sell through chat. Many users prefer to send a message rather than make a phone call or navigate a website. And mobile payments are growing rapidly.

In Europe, and in Spain in particular, the picture looks different.

Spanish users are comfortable using WhatsApp to speak to a business, book an appointment, request information, receive a confirmation or resolve an issue. They may also accept one-off payments through links, Bizum, card payments or connected payment solutions.

But it is far less obvious that they would accept Meta as their main wallet or trusted financial provider.

Spain has a very strong local ecosystem. Bizum ended 2025 with 1.237 billion transactions, €67.751 billion in associated volume and 111,000 online merchants. In other words, Spanish banks have already built a deeply established digital payment habit.

Europe also has particularly demanding regulation around data, competition and payments. Meta has already been designated as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act, and the European Commission has made it clear that large platforms must ask for consent before combining data across services and offer equivalent alternatives when users do not give that consent.

This limits the ability to build a closed super app in the Asian style.

That is why, in Europe, the most likely future is not “WhatsApp as a bank”, but “WhatsApp as a conversational interface connected to banks, payment systems, CRM platforms, e-commerce and business tools”.

The difference matters.

Meta can control the conversation, but not necessarily the entire financial infrastructure underneath it.

In short, this is not really about fintech. It is about the interface.

Meta’s investment in CRED matters, but the headline “WhatsApp becomes a fintech” falls short.

The bigger play is not financial. It is about the interface.

Meta wants WhatsApp to become the place where more transactions begin and get resolved: chatting, asking, comparing, booking, buying, paying, complaining and coming back again.

Fintech is one layer. AI is another. Flows are another. Advertising is another. Commerce is another. Customer support is another.

But they all converge in the same direction: turning conversation into business infrastructure.

For consumers, this could mean faster, simpler and more personalised experiences.

It could also mean greater dependence, more exposure to commercial automation and a higher risk of fraud.

For businesses, it could be a huge opportunity to sell more and serve customers better. But it also requires strategy, integration and careful management of trust.

For the startups that have grown around WhatsApp, the signal is clear: building on top of the platform is no longer enough. They need to create their own value beyond the platform.

Because if WhatsApp becomes the conversational operating system of mobile, the big question will be who really controls the customer relationship: the company, the startup acting as intermediary, or Meta.