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Whatsapp Will Provide 24/7 Customer Support on Its Payment Services in India

24Jun By AnkitaNo Comments

News

Whatsapp Will Provide 24/7 Customer Support on Its Payment Services in India

WhatsApp which has over 200 million users in India is working on to set up a 24-hour customer support for its payments services that are rolled out in India in the coming weeks. The leading chat app will provide support through e-mails as well as a toll-free number. "We will provide 24-hour customer support in English as well as three Indian languages- Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. Payments users can also contact the support team via e-mail and a toll-free number (when the service is rolled out in India)," WhatsApp spokesperson said. While WhatsApp is yet to announce the official date of launch of its UPI-based payments service, industry watchers expect an announcement to come in the next few weeks. Almost one million people are "testing" WhatsApp's payments service in India, which ...

19Jan By NitishNo Comments

News

WhatsApp Launches Business App for SMEs

Popular messaging platform WhatsApp today unveiled a new WhatsApp Business app, aimed at small and medium enterprises. The free-to-download Android app will make it easier for companies to connect with customers, as well as its 1.3 billion users to chat with businesses, WhatsApp said in a statement. WhatsApp Business is available today and free to download on Google Play in Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the UK and the US, it added. The app will be rolled out around the world in the coming weeks, it said. Over 80 per cent of small businesses in India and Brazil said WhatsApp helped them both communicate with customers and grow their business, the Facebook owned company said citing reports. India is home to over 200 million WhatsApp users. It has more than one billion users global...

Indians Make 50 Million Per Minute Whatsapp Video Calls Daily

8May By AdityaNo Comments

News

Indians Make 50 Million Per Minute Whatsapp Video Calls Daily

Indians make 50 million minutes of video calls daily via WhatsApp, the highest compared to users in any other part of the globe. WhatsApp, a popular messaging app that competes with the likes of Hike, Googles Allo and Viber in India, started offering video calling feature in November last year. The video calling feature also pitched WhatsApp against popular video calling apps like Microsoft Skype, Apples FaceTime and Google Duo. Since then, it has seen a steady growth in usage. One of the driving factors has been falling data prices and free promotional data by new comer, Reliance Jio. As per data shared by WhatsApp, India is the top country for video calling minutes with over 50 million video calling minutes per day. Globally, users make over 55 million video calls per day,...

Facebook Messenger Crosses 1.2 Billion Monthly Active Users

13Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

Facebook Messenger Crosses 1.2 Billion Monthly Active Users

Facebook's Messenger today said it has crossed 1.2 billion monthly active users milestone with the addition of about 200 million new users in last eight months. "We now have over 1.2 billion people actively using Messenger every month," Facebook Head of Messenger David Marcus said in a post on the social networking platform. In July last year, Facebook had said it had 1 billion users of Messenger, its messaging service on the social networking platform. Facebook has seen similar traction for its other products as well with India being a key consumer. WhatsApp, its mobile messaging app, has over one billion users of which about 200 million are from India. Its photo-sharing app Instagram has about 600 million users globally. Reports suggest Facebook's flagship app has 1.74 billion m...

Alibaba Invests in $200 Million in South Korea’s Messaging Giant Kakao Pay

21Feb By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Alibaba Invests in $200 Million in South Korea’s Messaging Giant Kakao Pay

Alibaba's payment affiliate Ant Financial will invest USD 200 million in a unit of South Korean messaging giant Kakao, the companies said today, the Chinese firm's latest step to expand its global reach. The investment in Kakao Pay comes less than a month after Ant bought US-based payments operator MoneyGram for around USD 880 million and struck a partnership deal with Thailand's Ascend Money in November. Ant is behind Alipay, which accounts for 80 [ercent of electronic payments in China where it is used for e-commerce at Alibaba online venues and a large number of mobile applications. Ant is also involved in investment services and online banking. "South Korea is an important market for Ant Financial in its global expansion," said Douglas Feagin, president of Ant Financial Intern...

14 Billion Messages Sent on WhatsApp in India

8Jan By PriyankaNo Comments

News

14 Billion Messages Sent on WhatsApp in India

New Year's eve saw a whopping 14 billion messages being sent on WhatsApp in India as more people opted to send season's greetings through the instant messaging platform than traditional routes like SMS and greeting cards. India is the largest market for the Facebook-owned company, accounting for about 160 million of its over 1 billion users. According to data shared by WhatsApp, 14 billion messages were sent on December 31, 2016 alone, an all-time high from India. With telecom operators charging a premium for SMS on occasions like New Year and Diwali, WhatsApp has been gaining popularity as an alternative as it is available free for users (apart from data charges). The traffic on the last day of 2016 was higher than WhatsApp's last record of 8 billion messages in one day on Diwali ...

6Jan By reutersNo Comments

CHINA

China’s ZTE to Slash About 3,000 Jobs: Sources

Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE, which is facing US trade sanctions that could severely disrupt its supply chain, is slashing about 3,000 jobs, including a fifth of positions in its struggling handset business in China, company sources said. The sources said the Shenzhen-based company, one of the world's biggest telecoms gear makers, is axing about 5 percent of its 60,000 global workforce. Its global handset operations will shed 600 jobs, or 10 percent of the total, with the cuts concentrated in China, where it has been losing market share. "Cuts in the handset business in China will be beyond 20 percent," said a senior executive who has been briefed on the lay-offs, which are scheduled to be completed within the first quarter. A local manager in one of the company's overse...

Facebook Rolls Out Light Messenger App For Emerging Markets

3Oct By NitishNo Comments

News

Facebook Rolls Out Light Messenger App For Emerging Markets

Facebook Inc launched a stripped down version of its popular Messenger app for emerging markets on Monday as it seeks to expand its international footprint. Messenger Lite, which uses less data and is designed to work in areas with slower internet connections, will roll out in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. Facebook said it will expand to other countries in the coming months. Facebook has largely saturated Western markets, including North America and Europe, and has set its sights on developing countries, in part by rolling out "lite" versions of its main Facebook app and now Messenger, which have fewer capabilities than the main apps. Users with Android phones will still be able to use the core features of Messenger, including the ability to send text messages...

Anand Chandrasekaran Will Join Facebook Messenger App Team

19Sep By PriyankaNo Comments

News

Anand Chandrasekaran Will Join Facebook Messenger App Team

As per the sources Facebook hired Snapdeal former executive and a high-profile investor Anand Chandrasekaran to help develop strategies for its Messenger app. The announcement could be made tomorrow. Both Anand and facebook didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Anand Chandrasekaran resume includes company like Yahoo & Snapdeal as a former senior executive. He also served at India’s largest cellular company, Bharti Airtel Ltd. as a chief product officer. Where he launched Airtel’s mobile application and a popular music streaming app. His expertise in Silicon Valley and India will help messenger platform. He will assume a global leadership role working on strategies and partnerships for Facebook’s billion-user-strong texting service, according to people familiar w...

WhatsApp to Share User Data With Facebook: HC Seeks Govt Reply

31Aug By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

INDIA

WhatsApp to Share User Data With Facebook: HC Seeks Govt Reply

WhatsApps recent decision to share user data with parent company Facebook today reached the doorsteps of Delhi High Court, which sought the governments response on the modification. A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra issued notice to the Centre on a plea by two users of the most popular instant messaging service, alleging that WhatsApp, Facebook Inc and Facebook India Online Pvt Ltds new private policy "compromises the rights of its users". Taking note of the concern by petitioners Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi, the high court wished to examine the issue and asked the concerned authorities to file their reply by September 14. "The privacy policy is in stark contrast to the Privacy Policy existing from July 7, 2012. In its first revised modificatio...

WhatsApp Will Share Your Phone Number with Facebook

25Aug By PriyankaNo Comments

News

WhatsApp Will Share Your Phone Number with Facebook

Messaging service WhatsApp has updated its global privacy policy, under which it will now share phone numbers of users with its parent company, Facebook. While the move will help Facebook offer more targeted advertisements on its own platform, WhatsApp will continue to be ad-free, a WhatsApp spokesperson said. He added that this is the first time when WhatsApp has updated user privacy policy after being acquired by Facebook in 2014 in a USD 19-billion deal. Privacy advocates had raised concerns that Facebook would start mining WhatsApp accounts for data. However, both the companies have maintained that WhatsApp would operate separately from the parent company and that its user data would not be shared without users consent.WhatsApp has over one billion users globally, with a significant...

Microsoft Buys AI Scheduling Service Genee to Bolster Office 365

24Aug By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Microsoft Buys AI Scheduling Service Genee to Bolster Office 365

Software giant Microsoft has bought a smart scheduling app Genee, as part of its effort to embed artificial intelligence (AI) to compete with the likes of Google Now and Apple. The start-up, which was founded in 2014, will shut down its service on September 1. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by Genee founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, who will join Microsoft. Genee specializes in using machine smarts to handle the time-sucking task of scheduling meetings. It is likely that Microsoft will be using this acquisition to bolster its Office 365 suite. "As we continue to build new Office 365 productivity capabilities and services our customers value, I'm confident the Genee team will help us further our ambition to bring intelligence into every digital experience...