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Facebook’s plan to merge the backends of Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram will create a proprietary messaging ecosystem nearly 4 billion users strong.
Success will depend on whether Facebook can persuade consumers and regulators it’s serious about privacy, while transforming from a social media company into a messaging-first commerce platform à la WeChat. WhatsApp is in the spotlight for now but just wait for Instagram’s long-anticipated (and unconfirmed) enterprise solution to take conversational business to the next level.

Now that the big players have opened their chat apps to businesses, the next battle in the messaging wars will be waged over attracting consumers.
Google’s nascent business messaging platform has the advantage of being built on top of the world’s best search engine and maps app. Apple Business Chat’s killer feature is Chat Suggest, which prompts iPhone users attempting to call businesses to message them instead. Facebook has its all-powerful ad platform at its disposal. Businesses are finally ready to message customers. It’s time to give customers the message.

In-chat payments may be the key to unlocking conversational commerce at scale in the west.
Apple Business Chat has Apple Pay built in, and Facebook has several projects in the works with WhatsApp Pay, Facebook Pay and, most controversially, Libra — its planned cryptocurrency. Kakao, LINE, and Telegram also boast their own crypto coins in various stages of development. Buying stuff is a crucial part of the conversational customer journey, and it’s about to get a whole lot easier.