Customer loyalty can be a delicate commodity to manage, and one company is counting on that loyalty to provide profitability. Communication application WhatsApp made a monumental change yesterday, announcing that the app is shedding its annual subscription fee and operating on an unprecedented form of ad revenue. The change is being rolled out over the next several weeks, according to the company, and replaces the previous plan of charging one dollar after a year of using the app.
In the app’s previous revenue plan, users were able to use the program free for a year and were required to pay a $0.99 fee. The fee, while cheap, presented an issue for foreign users without access to a credit or debit card. In the interest of maintaining the app’s trademark accessibility, the organization decided to do away with the fee altogether. The company feels that the loss of user-generated revenue is worth the increase in customer loyalty and engagement resulting from removing the required fee.
With the loss of subscription revenue, WhatsApp has a plan in place to replace lost income with an innovative method of in-app advertising. Rather than selling third-party ads, the company is planning to tailor business communications for each user.
“Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from,” the company notes in 
its blog post announcement. “That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.”
WhatsApp launched in early 2010, and exploded in popularity over its first years of existence. The app allows for free text messaging for all devices, and even includes simple international communication.
The app’s incredible numbers turned more than a few heads, and Facebook acquired the company in March of 2014. Shortly after the Facebook partnership, the app reached the 500 million-user mark, and has rapidly approached 1 billion since then.
The company, though owned by Facebook, continues to operate autonomously and independently of the social network. At the time of writing, WhatsApp is the most popular mobile messaging app, beating out communication giants like Facebook Messenger and Skype.