The head of WhatsApp has denied there are any plans to introduce adverts to the messaging service.
Rumours of major changes to the popular platform were sparked after a report in the Financial Times suggested teams at the service's parent company Meta were discussing ways to monetise the service - suggesting the experts were toying with the idea of showing ads in the list of chats with contacts.
However, Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp at Meta, has spoken out to deny the claims. In a post on X - formerly known as Twitter - he wrote: "This
@FT story is false. We aren't doing this."
A spokesperson for the company previously told the FT: "We can’t account for every conversation someone had in our company but we are not testing this, working on it and it’s not our plan at all."
The article suggested another way WhatsApp could start making money from the messaging app would be to start charging a subscription fee for it. However, the FT reported both ideas have divided insiders at the company with many being opposed to ads and subscription fees.
The chat app has been free since its launch in January 2009 and was sold to Facebook in 2014 for $22 billion. It now has more than 1.5 billion subscribers across the world.
