Iya Ramu credits GPay for saving her friendship. “Recently, I had blocked a friend across social media and messaging platforms. Unable to approach Ramu via any other digital platform, her friend finally reached out to her on the Google-owned mobile payments app, asking to reconcile. GPay isn’t typically seen as a communication tool, so it hadn’t occurred to Ramu to block her friend there as well. She was amused by her friend’s ingenuity and moved by their effort to reconnect.

On another occasion, she used GPay’s chat interface to communicate with a fellow passenger she had met on a flight. “I had lost my wallet in the airport, and they lent me some cash, which I promptly returned via the app.” Later, she messaged them on GPay to share that the airport authorities had found her wallet. Who would have thought that an app focused on transactions could mend and forge human connections?

Besides using GPay as an unintentional chat app, Ramu also uses Pinterest’s messaging feature to share and discuss images she likes on the visual bookmarking site. “Wherever there is shareable content, having a messaging interface helps to have seamless conversations without leaving the platform,” she says.

WhatsApp is the undisputed leader of messaging apps, with over 535 million monthly active users in India and more than 2.7 billion worldwide. Lately, though, instead of relying on WhatsApp alone, people are using all kinds of apps that have a chatting interface for some form of communication, even though that’s not the platform’s primary offering. This trend signifies a shift from calling to texting culture, compelling internet platforms and brands to prioritize enhancing their messaging interfaces, all the while raising questions on the future of digital messaging.

The shift has happened partly because WhatsApp has stopped being the perfect messaging app it once was. Meta, its parent company, has been pushing businesses to onboard its ad solutions platform, WhatsApp Business, to monetize the app that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought for $19 billion in 2014.

In Q1 2023, paid messaging [by businesses] on WhatsApp grew by 40% quarter on quarter, Zuckerberg said in an earnings call in April. By June, WhatsApp Business reached 200 million monthly active users worldwide. In India, “businesses send 6 to 60 lakh messages to users in a day,” says an anonymous executive at an analytical company that tracks business performance.

“Some international companies have started sending OTPs (one-time passwords) on WhatsApp as well, as it costs them one third the price of sending OTPs via SMSes,” says the executive quoted above who wishes to remain anonymous.

WhatsApp’s usage has fallen. The average time a user spends on it has gone down from 19 hours a month in 2020 to 18.6 in 2021 to 17.3 in 2022, as per global data on Verloop.io, a customer support automation platform, and analytics site datareportal.com. But they do not pin this fall on spamming messages. Verloop.io attributes it to “mobile usage patterns moderating following the abrupt surge seen during the pandemic.”

The open rate for business messages on WhatsApp has also fallen from 94% to 83% in the last two years, says the anonymous executive at the analytics company. Open rate is the share of recipients who open a message out of the total recipients it is sent to. However, a Meta spokesperson says in an emailed response to ET that the opening rates mentioned are still “well above standards for the industry and would be considered highly successful.”

“We continue to see the trend of people using all kinds of apps for some form of communication, signifying a shift from calling to texting culture, compelling internet platforms and brands to prioritize enhancing their messaging interfaces,” says an executive at an analytical company that tracks business performance.

“Some international companies have started sending OTPs (one-time passwords) on WhatsApp as well, as it costs them one third the price of sending OTPs via SMSes,” says the executive quoted above who wishes to remain anonymous.

WhatsApp’s usage has fallen. The average time a user spends on it has gone down from 19 hours a month in 2020 to 18.6 in 2021 to 17.3 in 2022, as per global data on Verloop.io, a customer support automation platform, and analytics site datareportal.com. But they do not pin this fall on spamming messages. Verloop.io attributes it to “mobile usage patterns moderating following the abrupt surge seen during the pandemic.”

The open rate for business messages on WhatsApp has also fallen from 94% to 83% in the last two years, says the anonymous executive at the analytics company. Open rate is the share of recipients who open a message out of the total recipients it is sent to. However, a Meta spokesperson says in an emailed response to ET that the opening rates mentioned are still “well above standards for the industry and would be considered highly successful.”

“This trend of people using all kinds of apps for some form of communication signifies a shift from calling to texting culture, compelling internet platforms and brands to prioritize enhancing their messaging interfaces.”

Ankit Kumar, 25, a growth consultant from Bengaluru, finds Instagram DMs convenient to keep in touch with social connections. He prefers Instagram and Twitter to make new connections as they eliminate the need for phone numbers. “It’s easier to ask for someone’s social media handle,” he adds. Conversations via WhatsApp tend to be more intentional, as he wrote it because due to work messages and spam, he was missing out on some of his friends’ messages there. People feel entitled to your time on WhatsApp and label you as rude if you don’t reply as soon as they believe you should. “We should have the power to choose when we reply,” says Taneja, co-founder of Yuvaa, a platform for youth. He has made Insta his main chat app as asynchronous communication is the expected norm there.

“On Instagram, the role of DMs has evolved,” a Meta spokesperson tells ET on email. “While it continues to be a space for transparent, honest

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