Meet WhatSim – a globe-trotting SIM for WhatsApp messaging

You can now buy a SIM card dedicated exclusively to chatting on WhatsApp in one of 150 countries. It’s called WhatSim and will automatically switch between a total of 400 carriers.

For a €10 a year fee text messages are free, while photo, video and voice messages are priced on a credit system.

You can pay € 5 for 1,000 credits (or up to €50 for 10,000 credits). Text messages, location and contact sharing are free, while multimedia messages are priced based on zones. You can check the WhatSim site to see which zone each country falls into.

The cheapest rates are 5 credits for a voice message (that’s €0.025), 20 credits for a photo (€0.10) and 100 credits for a video (€0.50). Voice and video messages are capped at 10 seconds long.

Note that in some countries the yearly rate is €5 instead of €10. The WhatSim will never expire, but you’ll need to top it up with credit when you want to use it. You can buy the card preloaded with credit and by the looks of it you can have it shipped worldwide, though the official site is available only in English and Italian.

It doesn’t seem like it provides generic mobile data that can be used with other apps, but if you’re traveling abroad a lot this can be a cheap way to stay in touch. Facebook already has deals in place with its Facebook Zero initiative but this aims to expand its foothold in mobile messaging.

Update: It turns out this is from a company called ZeroMobile that is not affiliated with WhatsApp. The company has been founded by Manuel Zanella, known from I’m Watch, one of the earliest Android-powered smartwatches.

Source | Via (in Italian)