WhatsApp hosted its second annual Business Summit in Mumbai on 16 September, unveiling a suite of new features designed to deepen business–customer engagement, simplify transactions, and boost discoverability. The announcements also underscored how the platform is increasingly being used by Indian state governments to deliver citizen services at scale.

Payments integrated into WhatsApp Business

Small businesses can now accept secure payments directly within the WhatsApp Business app. Merchants will be able to generate QR codes in a single tap, enabling customers to complete transactions via their preferred payment methods. Meta said the feature is intended to streamline the checkout process and shorten sales cycles.

In-app calling and AI-powered support

WhatsApp is rolling out in-app calling, allowing customers to place calls to larger businesses or receive them when requested. Future updates are expected to include voice messages and video calls, with potential use cases spanning industries such as telehealth. Businesses are also piloting Business AI, a tool that uses voice calling to deliver automated customer support at scale.

Centralised campaign management

Through Meta’s Ads Manager, businesses will now be able to manage campaigns across WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram in one place. The platform said the integration would allow companies to repurpose creatives, budgets and workflows while AI-driven optimisation tools such as Advantage+ improve campaign performance across channels.

Discoverability via Status and Channels

WhatsApp is expanding discoverability features within the Updates tab, which is used by 1.5 billion people globally. Businesses and creators will be able to run ads in Status, promote channels and offer subscriptions. Early adopters include Maruti Suzuki, Air India and Flipkart. WhatsApp stressed that these updates will remain separate from personal chats and inboxes and will roll out gradually.

Flexibility for small enterprises

To give small businesses more room to scale, WhatsApp now allows the Business App and Business Platform to be used simultaneously with the same phone number. This will enable firms to handle large message volumes through the API while continuing everyday conversations via the app.

Citizen services on WhatsApp

Meta highlighted that 91% of online adults in India already interact with businesses weekly on WhatsApp. The company is also extending partnerships with state governments. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, the “Mana Mitra” chatbot delivers over 700 multilingual services and is already being used by more than 4 million citizens. Odisha, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are among other states offering essential services through the platform.

Although Business Insider’s AI search tool is currently only used by roughly one percent of Business Insider’s readership — Hope said that this was the percentage of readers who had used BI’s previous search tool, and that the “percentage hasn’t grown that dramatically in a year of use” — it has significantly increased the engagement of those who do use the tool, with click-through to articles increasing by 50 percent since October, per Hope. 

“The goal here was to really find a way to build something that promoted journalism, not try and cover it up or paint it over with AI, right? We felt strongly that, when it comes to AI and chatbots, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” Hope said. “We can do creative things to actually promote the work that our journalists do day-in and day-out — and it worked quite well.”

Business Insider’s updated search tool isn’t the company’s only AI product that has grown over the past year. Consumption of BI’s AI audio briefings, which launched in June, has also grown by 20 percent month-over-month, per Hope. In addition to front-facing tools like the AI search and audio briefing, Business Insider staff have stepped up their internal use of AI, with Hope estimating that between 80 and 90 percent of staff were using AI tools — an increase from the roughly 70 percent of BI staff using AI tools in May.

“People are particularly interested in building GPTs for specific use cases. I think we have about 200 right now across our organization that people have created just for different, sometimes surprising, utilities,” said Hope, who elaborated that BI staff are using AI chatbots to simulate notes from editors or feedback from potential advertisers.

Business Insider was not the only publication that discussed AI search tools on the stage at this week’s conference. Wirecutter executive director of commerce Leilani Han said that the publication’s new AI-powered search feature had “definitely” improved click-throughs to its product recommendations, although she declined to share a specific growth figure. 

Han added that Wirecutter was actively looking to optimize its content for AI search — but that it had found that the playbook for AI search optimization is not a huge shift from the playbook for traditional search optimization. 

“The planning doesn’t seem to be drastically different,” she said. “For us, our focus has always been certainly the readers, and that hasn’t really changed.”

During his Publishing Summit talk, Hope acknowledged that Business Insider’s AI tools aren’t yet a significant revenue stream for the company, although BI views products such as the AI audio briefing as potential advertising or sponsorship inventory down the line. For now, Business Insider is investing in AI because it believes it will improve the company’s bottom line in the future — not because it’s a huge moneymaker in 2025.

“The ROI doesn’t look great — I’m not going to lie to you, just if you compare the dollars and cents — but we need to weigh that against where we see the future panning out, where the puck is going,” Hope said. “And part of it involves buy-in and faith from your organization that it is valuable to spend some of your resources on these tools and these technologies.”