New Delhi, Jan 12 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp has started to roll out a new feature that lets iOS users create, edit and share their own stickers.

"You can now turn your photos into stickers or edit existing stickers. In other news, you'll likely have to show the entire group chat how you did it. Rolling out now on iOS," WhatsApp wrote in a post on Instagram.

With this feature, you can turn your photos into stickers or personalise existing stickers.

With WhatsApp's editing tools, you can customise stickers with text, drawings, and the ability to overlay other stickers. When you send a custom sticker, it automatically saves in your sticker tray so you can reuse it whenever you want.

To create a sticker from an image, first access your sticker tray by clicking the sticker symbol to the right of the text box. From there, click the "create sticker" option and select a photo from your gallery.

Then, you can personalise your sticker by selecting a cutout and adding text, other stickers, or drawings to it. When you're finished, you can send your sticker.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly developing a new 'Meta Verified' subscription option that will allow businesses to subscribe to it to get a verified badge.

According to WABetaInfo, this subscription will replace WhatsApp Premium, the previous subscription that included a custom business link and the ability to link up to 10 devices.

New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is rolling out new features -- pin messages and check connection health for video calls to users on iOS.

According to the official changelog accompanying WhatsApp's 23.25.79 update on iOS, users can now pin messages in groups for all current members and let them check their connection health during a video call, reports WABetaInfo.

With the 'pin messages' feature, users get precise control over the duration for which a message remains prominently displayed in their chats, as they can choose from three distinct durations -- 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days.

Users also get the flexibility to dismiss a pinned message at any time, even before the chosen duration elapses, the report noted.

Moreover, users can get started with the check connection health during a video call feature by simply long-pressing their tile to reveal real-time feedback on the quality of their video call connection.

"If you don’t have one of these features, note that some accounts may receive them over the coming weeks, as indicated in the official changelog," the report said.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has launched a secret code feature for millions of users, an additional way to protect sensitive chats on its platform.

With a secret code, the users will be able to set a unique password different from what they use to unlock their phones to give their locked chats an extra layer of privacy.

“Rolling out secret code to Chat Lock on WhatsApp so you can protect your chats with a unique password. Now you can set your locked chats to only appear when you type the secret code in the search bar, so no one can unintentionally discover your most private conversations,” Meta Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said on his WhatsApp Channel.

San Francisco, Dec 10 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is rolling out a feature to search messages by date, channel alerts, and hidden navigation labels on Android.

According to WABetaInfo, these new features are presently available to some beta testers and will be rolling out to more users over the coming days.

The "channel alerts" feature was designed to improve the overall user experience for channel administrators by providing real-time insights about the suspension of their channels, along with the ability to restore the channel by sending a request to WhatsApp.

If someone owns a channel, the report noted that it would be worth opening “channel alerts” within the channel info screen to see if there is any violation.

The introduction of a channel alerts feature adds a new layer of transparency to the platform.

In addition, the communication platform is also rolling out other two features after installing the latest update of the app -- new improvements for the user interface by implementing a feature to automatically hide navigation labels and the top app bar while scrolling down the screen, and the ability to search messages by date.

The feature to search messages by date will offer users an efficient and convenient way to navigate through their chat history, retrieving specific messages from a particular date and helping them save time, the report mentioned.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has introduced disappearing voice messages, that will allow users to send a voice message that can only be listened to once before it disappears. It is similar to the “View Once” option for photos and videos introduced in 2021, to add another layer of privacy to your messages.

Surat - In a collaborative effort between the South Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of All India Traders (CAT), a seminar titled 'Exploring the gateway to digital business growth on WhatsApp and GST and FSSAI' was held at Samridhi, Nanpura. The event aimed to enlighten entrepreneurs on leveraging digital platforms for business expansion.

Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary of the Confederation of All India Traders, took center stage as the keynote speaker, sharing insights into the evolving landscape of digital commerce. The seminar commenced with a warm welcome address by Himanshu Bodawala, former president of the Chamber of Commerce, who highlighted the transformative impact of social media on modern business.

Bodawala reminisced about the era when business was bound by time constraints, emphasizing the paradigm shift enabled by social media platforms like WhatsApp. Currently boasting over 40 crore WhatsApp Business users in India alone, these platforms have become integral to business growth, allowing entrepreneurs to transcend geographical limitations.

Khandelwal underscored the pivotal role played by traders in the country's economy, citing numerous beneficial schemes for MSMEs that often go unnoticed. He predicted a significant surge in social commerce over the next five years, surpassing traditional e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. Khandelwal urged businessmen to embrace social commerce, revealing CAT's ambitious goal of onboarding 10 thousand traders into this evolving landscape.

Rohan Desai provided in-depth information on GST changes, while Metta's representatives Neha Bajaj and Priyansh guided entrepreneurs on utilizing WhatsApp Business, Instagram, and Facebook for effective business operations.

Chandresh Kansagra, a member of the Chamber's Food Processing Committee, made a presentation addressing concerns under the Food Safety and Standards Act. He handed over these concerns to CAT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal for presentation to the relevant department in New Delhi.

Kiran Thummar, Honorary Treasurer of the Chamber of Commerce, expressed gratitude to the attendees, and Pramod Bhagat, Chairman of the Retail Trade Committee, outlined the program's agenda. The seminar, skillfully conducted by committee co-chairman Mitesh Shah, saw active participation from entrepreneurs and businessmen, with the speakers addressing various queries from the traders before concluding the event on a positive note.

New Delhi, Nov 30 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp on Thursday launched secret code feature for millions of users, an additional way to protect sensitive chats on its platform.

With a secret code, the users will be able to set a unique password different from what they use to unlock their phones to give their locked chats an extra layer of privacy.

“Rolling out secret code to Chat Lock on WhatsApp so you can protect your chats with a unique password. Now you can set your locked chats to only appear when you type the secret code in the search bar, so no one can unintentionally discover your most private conversations,” Meta Founder and CEO mark Zuckerberg said on his WhatsApp Channel.

You'll have the option to hide the Locked Chats folder from your chatlist so that they can only be discovered by typing your secret code in the search bar.

“If that doesn’t suit your needs, you can still choose to have them appear in your chatlist. Whenever there’s a new chat which you want to lock, you can now long press to lock it rather than visiting the chat’s settings,” the company said in a statement.

The move will make the chats harder to find if someone has access to your phone or you share a phone with someone else.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp had rolled out Chat Lock to help people protect their more sensitive conversations.

“We’re so happy our community has been loving Chat Lock, and hope that secret code makes it even more useful to them. Secret code starts rolling out today, and in the coming months will be available globally,” said the company.

New Delhi, Sep 20 (IANS) To complete a purchase directly in the chat, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday announced a new feature in India that will allow WhatsApp users to pay businesses using a variety of payment options, including all supported UPI apps, debit and credit cards, and more.

The company partnered with online payment solutions provider PayU and Bengaluru-based Razorpay to add support for payments via credit and debit cards, net banking and all UPI apps in India.

"Starting today, people in India can add items to their cart and send a payment using the method of their choice from all supported UPI apps, debit and credit cards, and more," Meta said.

The company first introduced the payments service in Brazil and Singapore.

"This is going to make it even easier for people to pay Indian businesses within a WhatsApp chat using whatever method they prefer," Zuckerberg said.

Along with this feature, Meta CEO also announced some other features for users in India.

Meta launched ‘Flows’ so businesses can offer more experiences like quickly choosing a train seat, ordering a meal or booking an appointment -- all without leaving the chat.

"With ‘Flows’, businesses will be able to provide rich menus and customisable forms that support different needs," the company explained.

The company will make ‘Flows’ available to businesses globally using the WhatsApp Business Platform in the coming weeks.

Moreover, the tech giant will be bringing Meta Verified to businesses using WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.

"We've been hearing from a lot of businesses that they're very eager to build more credibility and get greater visibility. So I'm excited to start rolling out Meta Verified in the coming months.

“We're going to continue to evolve what's included in the toolkit to make sure that we're bringing the best value to businesses," Zuckerberg announced.

To become Meta Verified, businesses will need to demonstrate their authenticity to Meta and in return they will receive a verified badge, enhanced account support, impersonation protection, and additional features that will help people find them more easily.

For WhatsApp, this includes premium features like a custom web page and increased multi-device support.

The company will begin testing Meta Verified soon with small businesses using the WhatsApp Business app before introducing it to businesses on the WhatsApp Business Platform in the future, Meta stated.

New Delhi, Aug 26 (IANS) WhatsApp users in India on Saturday witnessed a new wave of scam where cyber-criminals started calling people on the platform from fake US numbers, pretending to be their senior office executives and colleagues, thus trying to give their modus operandi a new level of authenticity.

People working for a leading media company in the Capital, and even those who have quit the organisation, received numerous such fake international calls -- this time from US-based fake phone numbers -- from top executives, asking them to start conversation.

“Please get back to me as soon as you get my text, thanks,” read such messages, when names of the top executives.

This time, the international WhatsApp fake calls started with +1 (404) which is the calling code of Atlanta, Georgia, +1 (773) which is the code of Chicago, Illinois, and more.

In May this year, millions of WhatsApp users in India were left baffled at the amount of international spam calls they received, leaving many at the risk of financial and personal loss.

These spam calls with international numbers, mostly from African and Southeast Asian countries, along with fake messages from unknown users, flooded WhatsApp and Indians had nowhere to go.

Meta-owned WhatsApp has close to 500 million users in India.

Although the mobile numbers showed country codes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Ethiopia, it is not necessary that these calls are actually coming from these countries.

Most of these calls started with +251 (Ethiopia), +62 (Indonesia), +254 (Kenya), +84 (Vietnam) and other countries.

Another scam that is still being reported in India is that of receiving job offers via WhatsApp messages.

San Francisco, July 23 (IANS) Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature on iOS beta, which will allow users to initiate group calls with up to 15 people.

Group calls already support up to 32 participants, but it was only possible to initiate a group call with up to 7 people, reports WABetaInfo.

However, with the new feature, beta users can now initiate group calls with up to 15 people.

Although it is possible to select up to 15 users for the initial call, group calls can still have up to 32 participants in total.

With this feature, the company aims to make it more convenient for users to pick more participants during the group call setup.

The ability to initiate group calls with up to 15 people is currently rolling out to some beta testers that install the latest update of WhatsApp beta for iOS from the TestFlight app, and is expected to roll out to more users over the coming days, the report said.

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced the 32-person video calling feature for WhatsApp in November last year.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the messaging platform was rolling out a feature on iOS beta, which allows users to send high-quality videos.

While this feature preserves video dimensions, minor compression will still be applied to the video, thus sending videos in their original quality is not possible.

The default option will always be 'Standard quality' for all videos, therefore, users have to select the high-quality option every time they want to send a video with better quality.

A tag will be added to the message bubble when sending a video with the high-quality option to inform the recipient that the video is sent using this feature.

San Francisco, June 29 (IANS) Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature to create video calls with up to 32 people, on Windows beta.

Beta users will receive a message that invites them to try calling their groups, reports WABetaInfo.

Earlier, only the ability to place audio calls with up to 32 people was available on Windows.

However now, with the latest update, beta users can also video call with up to 32 people.

The new feature is currently available to some beta testers that install the latest WhatsApp beta for Windows update, and is expected to roll out to more users over the coming days, the report said.

In November last year, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced this feature for Android and iOS.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the messaging platform was rolling out a screen-sharing feature for video calls to some beta testers on Windows.

With this feature, users will get the choice to share a specific window or the complete screen with everyone participating in the video call.

San Francisco, May 26 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature called -- "WhatsApp usernames", which will let users to choose unique usernames for their accounts.

With this feature, users will be able to opt for a unique and memorable username, instead of depending solely on phone numbers to identify contacts, according to WABetaInfo.

The company may also provide users with the ability to contact others by entering a username within the app without knowing their phone numbers.

Moreover, the report said that the company is working on introducing the feature within the app settings, particularly, a section dedicated to this feature will be available within WhatsApp Settings > Profile.

With the ability to choose a username, WhatsApp users will be able to add an additional layer of privacy to their accounts, the report added.

Currently, the WhatsApp username feature is under development and it will be released to beta testers in a future update of the app.

Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that billions of WhatsApp users can now modify a message within 15 minutes of sending it.

This feature has started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks. All that the users need to do is long-press on a sent message and choose 'Edit' from the menu for up to 15 minutes after.

San Francisco, May 21 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature -- "sticker maker tool", which will let users create stickers right within the application on iOS.

According to WABetaInfo, the company plans to introduce a "New Sticker" option within the chat share action sheet.

The feature will allow users to select a photo from their library and edit it with tools such as the ability to remove the background.

Moreover, the report mentioned that the new feature will save users from downloading third-party applications.

The report also noted that a similar tool is already available on WhatsApp Web and Desktop, but the one in development on iOS will provide users with additional tools.

The ability to create stickers using an in-app sticker maker tool is in the works and will be included in a future app update.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out a new group calling feature on macOS devices, which will allow users to make group calls with a selected number of participants.

Earlier, it was not possible to start a group call as the button was either disabled or not functioning on macOS.

However, in the latest update of the WhatsApp beta, the call buttons (audio and video) are finally available, and users can now start a group call.

New Delhi, May 11 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp on Thursday said it has taken stern action on the growing menace of International scam calls in India, after the government took cognisance of the issue and announced to send a notice to the platform over the issue.

The platform, which has over 500 million users in the country, said it has ramped up its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems to bring down such incidents significantly.

"Our new enforcement will reduce the current calling rate by at least 50 per cent and we expect to be able to control the current incidence effectively. We will continue to work relentlessly towards ensuring a safe experience for our users," a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said that the IT Ministry will send a notice to WhatsApp on the issue of spam calls from unknown international numbers, stressing that social media platforms are responsible for ensuring the safety and trust of users.

These spam calls with international numbers, mostly from African and Southeast Asian countries, along with fake messages from unknown users, flooded WhatsApp users in India.

The spam calls showed country codes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Ethiopia, among others. Most of these calls started with +251 (Ethiopia), +62 (Indonesia), +254 (Kenya), +84 (Vietnam) and other countries.

WhatsApp said that international scam calls are a new way that bad actors have recently adopted.

By giving a missed call, they lead curious users to call or message back only to get scammed.

"We continue to provide several safety tools within WhatsApp like Block and Report, consistently build user safety education and awareness, as well as, proactively weed out bad-actors from our platform. However, bad actors find different ways to scam users," the company spokesperson noted.