Our new forecast for global mobile messaging app users shows that the pandemic has accelerated adoption of OTT messaging services, though not in every country nor to the same degree for every app.

Features like WhatsApp Carts—a new feature that lets WhatsApp users add products to a shopping cart while browsing a merchant’s catalog and then send the order to the business via messaging—will give the concept of social checkout more prominence, but we’re skeptical of WhatsApp’s version taking off in the US given the app’s low usage in the country.