The Day 1 of Facebook F8 Developer Conference 2019 ended with various striking announcements regarding the updates in Whatsapp and other products that come under the brand’s umbrella to make them more favourable to both users and businesses.
Earlier this year, they introduced a business API in WhatsApp to help entrepreneurs manage the delivery of non-promotional and automated messages to their target user base at regular intervals and provided the customers with the freedom to see whom to add in a group and whom not to.
And now, they have come up with another exciting opportunity that will transform the future of the mobile industry (after React Native). The team has offered mobile app developers with an opportunity to implement WhatsApp Verification into the Account Kit for Android and iOS. That implies users will be given the facility to receive all the verification codes via WhatsApp and not SMS.
This update has been brought into existence because most of the app users these days sign up using their phone number over their email, Facebook or any other third-party app due to security or other concerns. In a scenario like this, the mobile apps send a verification code over an SMS on the registered number and ask them to enter the code to complete the verification process or perform any process as a part of their multi-factor authentication programme. [Read more about Multifactor Authentication System on – The 4 Ways to implement multifactor authentication system in a Mobile App.]
While this process seems simple and concise, it has been hindering the path to acquire and engage a wider audience because most of the users do not prefer SMS as their default messaging platform. They prefer to work with apps that they use more commonly for performing the verification process.
With this new update, mobile app developers will be able to request their users to get the verification code on WhatsApp – the social media application they are more comfortable operating as compared to the traditional SMS system – to take the verification process forward, eventually resulting in better engagement rates.
This WhatsApp update, as per the experts, have been available in the Web Platform since 2018 but it is now when it will be rolled out on mobile apps. In a scenario like this, we still need to wait for a while to record its outcome in the mobile market.
Don’t forget to revisit this page to know how helpful the WhatsApp update proved to the mobile app developers.