With a month away from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is getting ready to permit different messaging networks in its app.

In an interview with Wired, Dick Brouwer, an engineering director at WhatsApp, mentioned that the corporate is able to supply interoperability on the platform with over 2 billion customers.

“There’s actual rigidity between providing a simple strategy to supply this interoperability to 3rd events while on the similar time preserving the WhatsApp privateness, safety, and integrity bar. I believe we’re fairly proud of the place we’ve landed,” he instructed the publication.

The EU agreed upon together with messaging interoprability below DMA in 2022. This rule mandates gatekeepers like WhatsApp and Messenger to open up their providers to different chat apps.

Meta can also be working so as to add help for different chat apps to Messenger. Initially, these experinces will  give attention to one-on-one chats the place individuals can ship textual content, audio, video, photos, and information throughout apps. As WABetaInfo reported earlier than, this expertise will reside in a brand new sub-menu on prime of the inbox referred to as “Third-party chats.”

Brouwer, who labored on rolling out end-to-end encryption for Messenger final 12 months, instructed Wired that this shall be an opt-in experince to keep away from spam and scams.

“I can select whether or not or not I wish to take part in being open to exchanging messages with third events. That is vital, as a result of it may very well be a giant supply of spam and scams,” he mentioned.

Corporations that wish to be be interoprable with Meta’s system must signal an settlement, particulars of which aren’t public but. WhatsApp would require end-to-end encryption to allow interoperability. Nonetheless, Apple’s just lately introduced modifications to the App Retailer might function an indicator that the phrases may not be easy.

Not too long ago, open-source messaging protocol Matrix’s founder Matthew Hodgson famous at a chat that it has labored with WhatsApp on an “experimental” foundation to make the protocol work with end-to-end encryption intact.

It’s not clear if different operators like Telegram, Viber, and Google are planning so as to add interoprability help with WhatsApp.

Brouwer instructed Wired that third-party chats and WhatsApp native chats may not attain function parity as interoprability might open up new privateness and safety points.

Apps that herald a number of messaging providers below one umbrella has been in highlight for the previous few months. Final October, WordPress.com proprietor Automattic purchased Texts.com for $50 million. Pebble smartwatch founder Eric Migicovsky’s Beeper has been in dialog for its effort — which Apple shutdown — to carry iMessage to Android telephones.