Making its "Status" feature more interesting, Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Tuesday rolled out an update that lets its 250 million monthly users share creative text-based "Status" updates.
"The text-based status feature allows you to update your contacts in a fun and personal way. To customise text statuses, users can choose a specific font and background colour, or include links," WhatsApp said in a statement.
The new feature is available on iPhone and Android phones. Also, users can now view "Status" updates on WhatsApp for the web.
Users can also control who can see their "Status" updates by choosing the option in WhatsApp's privacy settings.
Users can also reply to an update of a friend by tapping the reply option. A message will be sent in a WhatsApp chat with a thumbnail of the "Status" update.
The messaging giant is also preparing to introduce payments to its messaging app. This feature will allow users to transfer money to each other with just a text.
WhatsApp is looking to introduce immediate bank to bank transfer with Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is a payments infrastructure run by the Reserve Bank of India.
A beta version of WhatsApp's next update indicates that the service could soon support payments. Pictures emerged of a "Welcome to WhatsApp Payments" screen, which was discovered by the blog WABetaInfo.
India will be the first country to receive this feature from WhatsApp
Globally too, WhatsApp has released a new version for iOS devices that has an improved Chat Search feature along with bug fixes.
Available for download via the App Store, the new version '2.17.50' would be available for group chats as well, blog website WABetaInfo said on Monday.
WhatsApp would finally allow iOS device users to search messages in specific chats.
It would also enable the video streaming feature by default for all users and "share any file" on the app as well as the "pin" feature.
WhatsApp version '2.17.50' would also have general bug fixes and all localisations updated.
Default WhatsApp wallpapers would not be saved in the app, but in the Facebook servers.
WhatsApp currently has over one billion daily active users and sees over 55 billion messages being shared every day.