Business accounts yet to be confirmed or verified will have a grey question mark badge
WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging app has confirmed that three kinds of accounts that businesses can set up: unconfirmed, confirmed or verified. This was stated in a TechCrunch report in December 2017.
The way it works is that business account that have yet to be confirmed will have a grey question mark badge displayed on their profile.
These will be an indication of which business accounts to be most wary of.
“This account is using the WhatsApp Business app, but hasn’t been confirmed nor verified by WhatsApp,” stated WhatsApp.
‘Confirmed’ is the next business account level denoted by a grey check mark badge on the profile. This badge signifies that WhatsApp has confirmed that the phone number of this account matches the phone number for this business.
The final status is ‘verified’ which is badged with a green check mark.
“WhatsApp has verified that an authentic brand owns this account,” is what the company says of this. Though it’s not clear what this extra verification stage involves. Nor whether this top tier will be reserved for business accounts that are paying a fee to use WhatsApp’s tools.
Digital News Report 2017 found that Malaysians are the world’s largest users of WhatsApp at 51 per cent.
