WhatsApp has been silently working on adding username support to its platform for over two years now. Signs of the feature first appeared way back in May 2023, though progress has been slow. The company confirmed its intention to add username support in October last year. But there has been radio silence since then. Now, Meta has emailed businesses to prepare them for the upcoming username feature.
Meta’s email notes that username support in WhatsApp will help further bolster privacy by allowing users and businesses to show their username instead of phone number in individual and group chats.
For businesses, they can switch to a username to further build their brand name instead of relying on a phone number. It will also make it easier for customers to directly connect with brands on the messaging platform.
Meta feels this change will help improve business interactions, as they have “heard that people feel more confident engaging with businesses when their personal information stays private.”
More importantly, the email reveals that username support on WhatsApp will be optional and only roll out next year. So, it seems we still have a few more months of wait ahead of us.
As part of username rollout in the future, Meta wants businesses to prepare for a few changes, essentially related to customer identifier and updating their relevant workflows.
Username support will make WhatsApp more private
WhatsApp’s two major competitors — Telegram and Signal —already feature username support. This ensures you can reach out to people or businesses on these services without sharing your number.
Before WhatsApp rolls out username support, it will let users reserve their usernames via an early reservation feature. This will ensure that most users can get their desired username before the feature goes live.
Based on previous reports, there will be certain restrictions when you finalize a username. They cannot start with “www” and end with a domain like .com or .net. Additionally, they cannot begin or end with a period and their length must be between 3 and 30 characters. Also, WhatsApp will only allow periods and underscores as special characters.
