WhatsApp will soon allow you to search for companies in your area so that you can easily contact them. It is not clear whether the function will also work for placing reservations or placing orders. A screenshot already shows how the search function for companies will work.
WhatsApp ‘Nearby businesses’
You can send messages to some businesses directly from the popular messaging app WhatsApp. It seems that the developers of WhatsApp want to focus even more on that communication with companies because you will soon be able to spot companies in the area that use the application via a search function. The well-known rumor spreader WABetaInfo shows us for the first time a screenshot of the upcoming novelty.
As soon as you tap the search icon in WhatsApp, the option ‘Nearby businesses’ will appear. It comes with filter options that allow you to only display clothing stores, supermarkets and restaurants. There’s also a ‘More’ button, but it’s not clear yet if that will immediately show all other types of things or a new set of filtering options.
Reserve and order tables?
It is also unclear how WhatsApp intends to use this feature. Will this primarily work as a kind of customer service, or will you be able to reserve a table in a restaurant via a custom interface? Another option is that you will soon be able to order food or products from the messaging app.
So very little is known about this feature yet, but it is an interesting novelty for sure. For Meta, it represents a new way to compete with Google Maps’ business features. At the moment this feature is still under development and we don’t know when it will be available in WhatsApp. When that’s the case, we expect them in the beta version first.