WhatsApp now may allow users to send messages to third party apps

Now you may use WhatsApp to send messages to third party apps such as telegram or signal. This is part of the new chat interoperability feature that might roll out soon enough.

The new feature is coming to existence because of Europe’s digital market act DMA regulations. The new regulations give large scale companies six months to implement communication between different messaging boards.

The new Chat interoperability feature for WhatsApp

A report from WABetainfo, Whatsapp may soon roll out a feature allowing for third party chats. This new feature is currently available in WhatsApp beta version 2.24.5.18.

WABetainfo also reports a Chat Interoperability Feature will have to be triggered manually by the user. The opt-in aspect of the new chat interoperability was shown on a leaked screenshot.

There are many barriers present between the user and the app they want to send a message to. The first barrier being the feature itself, you will have to manually activate to allow WhatsApp to enable the chat interoperability feature.

Then the second barrier will read follows –

“You’re messaging someone outside of WhatsApp. Third-party apps may use different end-to-end encryption.” 

Then the first barrier follows with another read that states: “Spam and Scams may be more common in third-party chats”. 

And the last precaution reads: “Third-party apps have their own policies. They may handle your data differently than WhatsApp does.”

What we know so far

One of the things we learned from the new feature is how it acts. The feature can send messages to other users on another app without requiring them to have a WhatsApp account. A separate inbox will get created to keep track of the chats to other apps.

The report got a valid confirmation when Dick Brouwer, an engineering director at WhatsApp confirmed the chat interoperability feature soon showing up on WhatsApp because of EU DMA regulations.

The engineering director had this to say about WhatsApp future- 

“We think that the best way to deliver this approach is through a solution that is built on WhatsApp’s existing client-server architecture…This effectively means that the approach that we’re trying to take is for WhatsApp to document our client- server protocol and letting third-party clients connect directly to our infrastructure and exchange messages with WhatsApp clients.”

Brouwer told Wired

WhatsApp Chat interoperability Limitations

The new feature also comes with many limitations, some of them will be group chats and calls. The features that are on the table are text messages, pictures, voice messages, and videos. All of these features will be available from day one.

But the group chat or call might show up in later updates. For latest updates in the Tech world, Subscribe to Tecxology.