For over a decade, a WhatsApp account has meant one thing: using a phone number. That is about to change. The Meta-owned platform has begun rolling out username reservations globally from 29 June, ahead of a wider launch later this year, allowing users to start conversations without ever sharing a mobile number.
The announcement came from WhatsApp’s new chief executive, Kunal Shah, the CRED founder who took charge of the platform earlier this month, succeeding Will Cathcart, after Meta’s $900 million investment in his fintech company. Writing on X, Shah said timing was everything, noting he had joined WhatsApp early enough to claim his own username before the feature reaches the wider world, and urged others to do the same.
Unlike the open, searchable usernames on platforms such as Instagram or X, WhatsApp is positioning this as a privacy feature rather than a discovery one. There will be no public directory to browse. A contact will need to know someone’s exact username before messaging them for the first time, and existing chats built on phone numbers will continue to function exactly as before. Usernames can run up to 35 characters and can be changed or removed at any point.
WhatsApp is also introducing an optional “Username Key”, a secondary code that first-time contacts must enter before they can message someone via username. It gives users a further layer of control over who reaches them, on top of the end-to-end encryption, blocking and reporting tools already in place.
The company has framed the shift around situations where sharing a number feels excessive: a networking event, a new classmate, a neighbour, a community group. It has also said it will reserve usernames tied to well-known public figures and celebrities to guard against impersonation, while businesses and creators may be able to claim usernames that match their existing Instagram or Facebook identities where possible.
The rollout itself will be gradual and region-dependent, with users notified in-app once reservations open in their market, while the broader feature spreads over the coming months. For India, the timing carries extra weight. The country remains WhatsApp’s largest market by far, with more than 500 million of its over three billion global users, and it is also where Shah, an Indian entrepreneur with deep roots in the country’s fintech scene, now sits at the helm.
What began as a messaging app tied to the SIM card in your pocket is edging towards an identity layer of its own, one that consumers increasingly expect from the apps they trust with their daily conversations. Phone numbers are not going away. But for the first time, they are no longer the only way in.
