Meta bets big on in-app purchases

WhatsApp, the messaging platform owned by Meta, announced a shopping feature for India-based consumers to purchase groceries and other items within WhatsApp. The feature is launched in partnership with JioMart, an Indian e-commerce company.

Why should we care?
Since purchasing WhatsApp for $22B in 2014, Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have struggled to fully monetize the messaging platform to the same extent it has Instagram or Facebook. Meta sells click-to-message ads, which bring billions of dollars per year across all Meta-owned apps, according to Bloomberg, but Zuckerberg’s full vision of messaging-based commerce has yet to fully materialize. Through an India-based launch, Meta is both rapidly expanding the potential for payments rails to become a major source of revenue for the company, while also fueling the e-commerce battle between Meta, Amazon, and Walmart in South Asia. Amazon recently announced a 51% stake in Ecom Express, an Indian logistics solutions firm, in an effort to control and expedite more of the supply chain in India. Walmart, meanwhile, owns Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, and wants to increase its India-based sourcing to $10B per year by 2027. With competition, market size, and dwindling revenues at stake, WhatsApp’s feature launch can have significant ripple effects far beyond this new e-commerce flow.