Meta details its future plans for WhatsApp and Messenger’s interoperability with third-party messaging apps

Tech giant Meta has given in to the Digital Markets Act (DMA) pressure in Europe, and it has announced that two of its primary messaging platforms will soon gain more interoperability features.

Closing out the week with a major blog post, Meta announced that WhatsApp and Messenger would soon be able to connect with other third-party messaging services via group chats, with video call support coming down the line.

The tech giant first talked about building interop support back in March, and we got our first look at what the functionality might look like in WhatsApp later in the same month. At the time, Dick Brouwer, an engineering director at WhatsApp suggested that the company had been building on interoperability for the past two years, and the functionality isn’t a result of DMA pressure.

Third-party apps interested in building interoperability support for WhatsApp and Messenger would need to encrypt messages using the Signal Protocol, and then package them using XML. Meta and WhatsApp users, on the other hand, will have an option to opt in to third-party chats.

Now, the tech giant is sharing more information on what the functionality’s future holds, and it includes notifications about compatible third-party apps, an onboarding flow for users to learn more about third-party chats, more options to manage third-party chats, group chats, and calling.

Timeline: 2025 for group chats, 2027 for video calling

According to the tech giant, WhatsApp and Messenger users in the EU will now start seeing prompts to notify them about third-party chat support, alongside reminders when a new third party messaging app builds and is live with interoperability support.

An onboarding flow will educate users about third-party chats, alongside options to choose which third-party messaging platform they want to receive messages from, and if third-party and WhatsApp messages should all be stored in a combined inbox or two separate ones.

Further, while no timeline was shared, Meta also shared that, beyond the basic DMA requirements, it will enable RCS features like reactions, direct replies, typing indications, and read receipts.

Future updates will introduce third-party group chats (2025) and third-party video calling (2027).