Your WhatsApp probably looks like mine. Family group, a couple of friends, and then a wall of the other stuff: bank alerts, courier updates, some airline reminding you to check in. Meta knows, and it’s now testing a fix: messages from large businesses like banks or airlines get moved automatically into a new “Offers & Updates” folder after a set number of hours, with test durations running up to 24 hours. TechCrunch broke the story, and the test is currently live with select partners on the WhatsApp Business Platform.
One catch though. You can switch the whole thing off in settings if you want everything on one timeline, but you can’t pick your own timer Meta decides when your messages get swept, or they don’t get swept at all. No middle option. Small businesses and individual WhatsApp Business accounts are exempt for now, though WhatsApp says it could pull them into the folder later.
Here’s the part that explains why this exists. On Meta’s Q2 2026 earnings call, Zuckerberg said “Other Revenue” crossed $1 billion, with WhatsApp’s paid messaging and subscriptions contributing a major share. So the clutter isn’t an accident; it’s the product. Meta charges businesses to land in your chat list, and now it’s building the broom. To be fair, WhatsApp has been trimming spam for a while: marketing unsubscribes came in 2024, broadcast limits last year, and since October 2025 there’s a cap on messages businesses can send without getting a reply. The folder is the next step, and honestly, anything that gets delivery updates away from actual conversations is welcome. Just don’t expect the business messages themselves to slow down. That billion says otherwise.
