Meta Doubles Down on WhatsApp Business: Launches Business Agent to Target China's Cross-Border Market

Ebrun Exclusive: During its Q4 2025 earnings call, Meta revealed a significant figure: the annualized revenue for paid business messaging on WhatsApp has surpassed the $2 billion threshold for the first time. This indicates that a growing number of businesses are willing to pay directly for the ability to 'communicate with customers on WhatsApp.'

This year, Meta continues to intensify its focus on business messaging. Recently, at its 'Conversations Shenzhen Summit,' the company officially launched its latest AI-powered business messaging solutions for Chinese companies going global. These include the Meta Business Agent for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the Meta Business Agent Platform for large enterprises. Service providers in marketing and business messaging, including MeetSocial, participated in the conference and engaged in face-to-face discussions with cross-border merchants.

According to introductions, the Meta Business Agent was called 'Business AI' during its early testing phase. Initially integrated only on WhatsApp and Messenger, it has now also been introduced to Instagram. Meta positions it as a '24/7 business partner' for companies: it can be set up in just minutes, understands a company's products, inventory, and policies, and engages in natural, back-and-forth conversations with customers in the brand's tone and the customer's local language. It helps customers find suitable products, complete purchases, or resolve post-sales issues.

'We would recommend cross-border e-commerce companies to first apply it in the 'cart abandonment' stage—using the AI Agent to remind users that they still have items in their shopping cart that haven't been paid for. If you train the Agent accordingly, it can also suggest alternatives to the items in the cart while reminding them. This goes beyond just reminding them to complete the purchase; it involves further communication, including recommending new products to them, which will increase order volume and conversion rates,' said Zhou Yanbing, Industry General Manager for Greater China at Meta.

Vietnamese cross-border e-commerce brand HADAKI is one of the key early test cases highlighted by Meta for this launch. HADAKI specializes in sports and sports injury protection equipment. Before introducing AI, the team had to manually process thousands of Messenger messages daily, inevitably leading to frequent errors. After integrating the Business Agent with Messenger, HADAKI achieved a 20% increase in conversion rates, doubled reply volume (with an average response time of under 10 seconds), eliminated language barriers, and also saw a 5% increase in average order value.

The Meta Business Agent Platform targets large cross-border enterprises with more complex customization and compliance needs. It allows businesses to connect to a vast ecosystem encompassing hundreds of systems, including Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee, empowering the Business Agent to take actual actions on behalf of the business. Through this platform, companies can also seamlessly integrate with existing backend systems like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or e-commerce tools and define operational boundaries themselves. These boundaries can include price limits (e.g., 'discounts offered cannot exceed 10%'), conditions for transferring to a human agent, and specific topics that must be handled manually (e.g., 'any safety-related complaints must be escalated to a human agent').

Furthermore, their pricing models differ. SMEs initially use a free version, with advanced versions charged based on subscription plans. Large enterprises are billed based on actual usage. However, specific pricing details for both models have not yet been publicly disclosed.

Notably, regarding the training mechanism, the Meta Business Agent learns entirely based on the material provided by the business itself. By feeding it product catalogs and historical customer conversations, the Agent acquires the corresponding knowledge. Currently, there is no preset set of universal rule templates at the country or industry level; businesses must train and define these themselves.

Presently, over 3.5 billion users globally are using Meta applications, including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The functionality of the Meta Business Agent across these different platforms is largely consistent, but the user demographics and platform characteristics differ. According to Zhou Yanbing, WhatsApp has higher daily penetration and usage rates in countries like those in South America or Southeast Asia. Messenger sees more concentrated user volumes in certain Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines and Thailand. Instagram attracts a younger, more active user base, with a platform character leaning towards youthfulness, visuals, and personalization.

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