Meta Platforms has appointed Cred founder Kunal Shah as the new global head of WhatsApp after investing $900 million (around Rs 8,550 crore) in the Indian fintech startup as part of its Series H funding round.
Shah is faced with a host of challenges when it comes to heading WhatsApp, including creating new revenue streams for the firm, along with consolidating its advertising and subscription features, as well as integrating AI agents into the messaging platform.
Business Platform Subscription Challenges
WhatsApp makes a majority of its revenue from businesses who pay the platform for the ability to reach its users. Medium and large firms use the WhatsApp Business Platform to send automated messages to users, such as flight confirmations, OTPs, or order tracking updates.
The platform also charges businesses a small fee per conversation, with rates varying by region and whether the chat was initiated by the user or the business.
The company also changes its business model from a "24-hour conversation window" pricing model to a strict per-message billing system. In high-density markets like India, Meta increased marketing template rates by roughly 10%. This has attracted backlash from business owners who use WhatsApp as they went from paying a fixed fee for conversations across 24 hours to being billed for every message. They also have to stick to approved messaging templates from Meta.
The app is also featuring ai-powered chat assistants, AI-generated images, business AI agents and ai-powered search and recommendation features.
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Data Privacy Concerns
The plans to integrate AI agents along with facilitating businesses to send unsolicited messages, may also alienate users and open up questions regarding data privacy.
Despite the company integrating end-to-end encryption into its messaging feature, Meta Platforms has facing legal action for privacy issues. In early 2026, Meta and WhatsApp were hit with major class-action lawsuits in a California federal court, including a domestic suit led by plaintiffs Brian Y. Shirazi and Nida Samson. The litigation directly challenged WhatsApp's core promise of privacy, alleging that Meta misled users about its end-to-end encryption.
The plaintiffs claimed that internal mechanisms and user IDs allow Meta employees and external contractors to bypass encryption protocols to access user metadata and message content, sparking an intense legal battle over the platform's security claims.
The company is also facing a notable anti-trust lawsuit from the European Commission regarding its updated Business Solution Terms. Regulators alleged that Meta was abusing its dominance by embedding its own Meta AI directly into WhatsApp while legally and technically blocking competing third-party AI providers from accessing the platform's enterprise API. By February 2026, the EU announced plans to force interim emergency measures on Meta to halt this practice.
Online Payment Integration
Coming from Cred, Shah brings with him notable experience in the fintech sector especially with regards to the digitisation of payments. WhatsApp Pay has lost the peer-to-peer (P2P) race to PhonePe and Google Pay in its biggest market, India, capturing less than 1% of the market.
Despite having over 500 million active users in India who live on the app, WhatsApp Pay's market share sits at less than 1% of total UPI transaction volumes. To put that in perspective, PhonePe and Google Pay command roughly 45% and 35% of the market respectively.
ALSO READ: Meet Kunal Shah, The Man Tasked To Head WhatsApp Globally In A Challenging Tech Space
Shah possibly facing challenges involving the integrate of high-value financial services such as lending, insurance, or premium commerce directly into WhatsApp's business sector.
This involves functions such as making sure every business interaction on WhatsApp ends with a seamless, in-chat checkout.
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