Social media giant WhatsApp has added another innovative feature which will allow only the administrators of a group to send messages, which is optional, the company announced on Saturday.

“Today, we're launching a new group setting where only admins are able to send messages to a group. One way people use groups is to receive important announcements and information, including parents and teachers at schools, community centers, and non-profit organizations. We've introduced this new setting so admins can have better tools for these use cases,” a blog posting by WhatsApp said.

In order to avail the feature, an administrator of a group can select the “Only Admins” option, which will only permit the administrator to send messages in a group. WhatsApp will hide the chat text input bar, alerting the user that a message cannot be sent. However, users can contact administrators if they wish to send an important message to the group.

To change the setting, open “Group Info,” tap Group Settings > Send Messages and select “Only Admins.” This setting is rolling out to all users globally on the latest supported versions of the app respectively.  

Payment service in India

The social media giant is also testing its payment services in India and ahead of an official launch. The Facebook-owned service has said that it has updated its privacy policy and terms of use. The company said that it has updated its policies and terms of service to "reflect the addition of payment interoperability features" ahead of the full-fledged launch of the service.

"We'll be updating our WhatsApp payments Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to provide simpler language on how the payments feature operates. It also reflects the addition of payment interoperability features we've added since the beta started," a WhatsApp spokesperson told PTI news agency.

The company has worked closely with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), bank partners, and the Indian government on these details of how its service works.

Around one million people are "testing" WhatsApp's payments service in India, which is the largest base for the Facebook-owned company that has over 1.5 billion users globally. WhatsApp has over 200 million users in India. The messaging app has already received permission from NPCI to tie up with banks to facilitate financial transactions via Unified Payments Interface (UPI).