If you make use of WhatsApp Business as a channel to interact directly with customers, there is a significant change that will take effect from 1st October 2026. Announced in July this year, Meta confirmed that it would be charging for every message that you send back to a customer.
These free-form replies were previously offered at no charge to companies leveraging a WhatsApp Business account, provided said replies happened within 24 hours of them being sent by a customer.
Now, this model is falling away, which could end up being quite expensive for South African businesses who depend on the platform as a key form of engagement and customer service. This was brought to our attention by Helm, which is a local AI and customer experience company.
“It’s easy to read this as WhatsApp getting more expensive, full stop. But even with the new fees, customer service conversations on WhatsApp still cost around four times less than running the same volume through a traditional call centre. That gap doesn’t close in October, it just narrows slightly,” noted Arno van Huyssteen, chief solutions officer at Helm, in a release to Hypertext.
At the time of writing, it is unclear what tangible impact this will have on the operating budgets for WhatsApp Business account holders.
An official rate card is currently slated for release by Meta on 1st September, after which WhatsApp Business account holders can start running the calculations in terms of what these changes will mean for their expenses. As such, they will have a full-month to work on a strategy, and this is where Helm explained that savvy businesses will need to re-evaluate the way they handle interactions and conversation flows with customers on the platform.
“Template messages such as marketing, utility, and authentication, are not new to this. They’ve carried a per-message cost for a while, so what is new is that the ordinary back-and-forth of a support conversation now carries a cost too, and it applies at the platform level to every business with no exceptions,” Helm pointed out.
“Once you convert this into rand and local conversation patterns, the impact becomes more relatable, and it’s clear that businesses need to start adjusting their message flows now in order to lessen that impact. We’re also in ongoing conversations with Meta and other BSPs about how this gets rolled out, and we’ll keep clients updated as that develops,” van Huyssteen explained.
While many businesses will still be waiting to see what the changes will mean long-term, Helm is still advising on ways for account holders to think about reacting to said changes right now. To that end, the company outlined five elements to mull over. These include:
- Consider a second channel for high-volume, low-cost interactions. Seek out platforms that are zero-rated on major South African networks, removing data costs for customers and giving you an alternative channel for high-volume, low-complexity conversations that don’t carry WhatsApp’s new pricing.
- Consolidate your message flow. If your workflows currently split one response into two or three shorter messages for readability, each of those will be billed separately under the new model. Reviewing and combining workflows without compromising the customer experience can meaningfully reduce your billable message count.
- Use WhatsApp Flows for anything structured. This is the single strongest lever available. A Flow presents a full form – multiple questions, dropdowns, uploads – as one interactive screen inside the chat, instead of five or six back-and-forth messages. It’s a natural fit for applications, claims intake, competition entries, and bookings.
- Shift volume into templates where it belongs. Utility and authentication templates still qualify for volume discounts that service messages won’t get. Making sure messages are correctly categorised, rather than defaulting to free-form replies, will reduce cost and improve accuracy at the same time.
- Use click-to-WhatsApp ads as an entry point. Conversations that start from a Facebook or Instagram click-to-WhatsApp ad open a 72-hour free messaging window that isn’t affected by the October changes. It’s a currently underused way to open conversations without the new cost exposure.
It is at this point that Helm starts to punt its services. “If your team is running a digital agent or chatbot through a third party, or using Meta’s own digital agent, the billing model will differ depending on the provider. Either way, it results in a per-message fee,” it highlighted.
“Helm doesn’t profit from Meta’s fee increase. Our job is the exact opposite of marking up – we want to make sure that this fee change costs our clients (and any other clients who need our help) as little as possible. We’d rather have that conversation now than have them find out from an invoice,” shared van Huyssteen.
Whether you opt to leverage the expertise of Helm or not, your business needs to consider its strategy when these changes take effect from 1st October, as they are coming regardless of what you choose to do.
[Image – Photo by Philip Oroni on Unsplash]
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