International sales no longer belong only to large companies with overseas offices and dedicated regional teams. Smaller manufacturers, exporters, e-commerce businesses and professional services firms can now speak directly with prospects across multiple markets, often using the same messaging apps their customers already use every day.

WhatsApp is one of those channels, but using it for business becomes harder as enquiry volumes increase. Conversations become scattered across different sales representatives, follow-ups are easy to miss and managers have limited visibility into who is speaking to which customer. A WhatsApp CRM adds more structure by connecting conversations with customer records, ownership, follow-up activity and team workflows.

For growing businesses, that shift matters. WhatsApp can remain a convenient communication channel while becoming part of a more organised sales process.

WhatsApp Often Becomes a Sales Channel Before Businesses Plan for It

Many companies do not deliberately decide to build a WhatsApp sales operation.

It simply happens.

An overseas buyer asks for a catalogue and wants to continue the conversation on WhatsApp. A distributor sends a message after meeting the company at a trade show. A prospect asks for a quotation. A salesperson follows up after an enquiry from the website.

Over time, more customer communication moves into WhatsApp because it is fast and familiar.

The problem is that the process often grows without any structure around it.

One salesperson has customer conversations on one account. Another salesperson uses a different account. Important information may remain inside chat histories, spreadsheets or personal notes.

This can work when there are only a few enquiries.

It becomes much more difficult when the business has multiple representatives, hundreds of leads and customers spread across several countries.

The Real Problem Is Not Messaging, It Is Follow-Up

Most sales opportunities are not won in the first conversation.

A buyer may ask for information today, request pricing next week and need another follow-up a month later.

B2B sales cycles can be even longer.

A manufacturer might speak with a potential distributor several times before sending samples. A procurement team may need internal approval before responding to a quotation. An overseas customer may disappear for several weeks before returning with a revised requirement.

WhatsApp makes these conversations easy to start.

It does not automatically create a reliable follow-up process.

Without a CRM structure, salespeople may depend on memory, starred messages, spreadsheets or personal reminders.

That creates predictable problems:

• promising leads are forgotten;
• several employees contact the same buyer;
• there is no clear customer owner;
• managers cannot see which enquiries are still active;
• follow-ups depend too heavily on individual habits;
• customer context becomes difficult to transfer between employees.

A CRM helps turn the conversation into a process rather than leaving it as another unread message in an inbox.

International Sales Add Another Layer of Complexity

Domestic sales teams may already struggle with fragmented conversations.

International teams have additional challenges.

Different Time Zones

A customer in Europe may send a message while a salesperson in Asia is offline.

If the team relies completely on manual responses, leads can wait hours before receiving even a basic acknowledgement.

Automated replies and scheduled follow-ups can help maintain communication outside normal working hours while leaving important conversations for a salesperson to continue later.

Different Languages

A salesperson may be experienced at selling a product but less confident communicating in the buyer’s language.

Copying every message into a separate translation tool adds friction and increases the possibility of losing context.

Real-time translation inside the sales workflow can make everyday conversations easier, particularly when teams handle enquiries from several markets.

It does not eliminate the need to review sensitive or highly technical wording, but it can make routine communication much faster.

Multiple WhatsApp Accounts

International teams frequently operate more than one WhatsApp account.

There may be separate numbers for different countries, sales representatives, brands or departments.

Without central management, employees spend time switching accounts and customer information remains fragmented.

A multi-account CRM approach can give managers and team members a clearer view of conversations and ownership without forcing every customer relationship into an isolated inbox.

Customer Information Should Belong to the Business

There is another issue that growing businesses sometimes discover too late.

Customer relationships often become closely tied to individual salespeople.

A representative may have months or even years of WhatsApp conversations with buyers. They know previous quotations, product preferences, objections and follow-up history.

When that employee changes roles or leaves the company, transferring the relationship can be difficult.

The new account owner may receive a phone number and customer name but little context about what happened before.

Centralising customer records and conversation history reduces that dependency on individuals.

For management, this is not only about efficiency.

It is also about protecting a business asset.

Customer relationships developed through company time, marketing and sales activity should remain accessible to the organisation even when employees change.

AI Is Most Useful When It Removes Repetitive Sales Work

AI is becoming part of many CRM systems, but its value depends on what it actually removes from the salesperson’s workload.

The strongest use cases are usually repetitive tasks.

A salesperson may answer the same questions about product availability, shipping, minimum order quantities or company information dozens of times.

They may also spend time:

• writing similar follow-up messages;
• checking which leads need another response;
• translating routine conversations;
• searching previous chats for customer context;
• answering basic questions outside working hours.

AI-assisted replies, knowledge-based chatbots and automated follow-up can reduce some of this work.

The objective should not be to remove salespeople from the conversation.

It should be to let them spend more time on the conversations where judgement, negotiation and relationship building actually matter.

Better Visibility Helps Sales Managers Too

WhatsApp can feel highly productive from the salesperson’s perspective while remaining almost invisible to management.

A manager may know that the team is busy but still struggle to answer basic questions:

Which leads are active?

Who owns each customer?

Which prospects are waiting for a quotation?

How many enquiries have not been followed up?

What happens when a salesperson goes on leave?

Which customer conversations are generating progress?

Once WhatsApp activity is connected to customer records, assignments and follow-up information, managers have a clearer view of the sales process.

This does not mean monitoring every message.

It means having enough visibility to manage workload, identify missed opportunities and ensure customers are not forgotten.

The CRM Should Match How the Business Actually Sells

A company does not necessarily need to replace its entire technology stack simply because WhatsApp has become important.

The right approach depends on how sales already work.

For some businesses, WhatsApp is only one of several communication channels connected to a larger CRM.

For others, particularly exporters and international B2B teams, WhatsApp is where most customer conversations actually happen.

In that situation, using a WhatsApp CRM for international sales such as WADesk can make more sense than building a complicated process around separate messaging, translation, lead tracking and follow-up tools.

WADesk brings customer conversations, multiple WhatsApp accounts, lead management, AI assistance, real-time translation and team collaboration into the same workspace. It also supports workflows for identifying potential overseas buyers and managing them through subsequent WhatsApp communication.

The important point is not how many features a platform offers.

It is whether those features remove friction from the way the sales team already works.

When Does a Business Need More Than WhatsApp Business?

Not every company using WhatsApp needs a CRM.

A small business with one account, one salesperson and a manageable number of customer conversations may be perfectly comfortable with WhatsApp Business.

The need for additional structure usually becomes clear through operational symptoms.

For example, the business may be ready for a CRM when:

• several employees are handling WhatsApp enquiries;
• multiple accounts need to be managed;
• leads regularly require several follow-ups;
• managers cannot easily see customer ownership;
• staff are maintaining separate spreadsheets alongside WhatsApp;
• customers communicate in several languages;
• conversation history is difficult to transfer between employees;
• missed or duplicate responses are becoming common.

At that stage, the challenge is no longer simply sending messages.

It is managing customer relationships at scale.

Growing Internationally Without Adding Unnecessary Complexity

Small and medium-sized businesses have a particular challenge when expanding overseas.

They need more process, but they rarely want more administration.

Adding a new system only makes sense if it removes more work than it creates.

That is why WhatsApp CRM is becoming relevant to growing international businesses. It adds structure around a communication channel employees and customers are already using rather than forcing both sides into an entirely new way of working.

The sales team can continue speaking with buyers through WhatsApp.

The difference is what happens behind those conversations.

Leads can have owners. Follow-ups can be tracked. Customer history can remain with the company. Managers can gain visibility. Routine tasks can be automated. Language barriers can become easier to manage.

Final Thoughts

WhatsApp has made international customer communication faster, but faster messaging does not automatically create a better sales process.

As enquiry volumes, team sizes and overseas markets grow, businesses need a clearer way to organise the customer relationships behind those conversations.

A WhatsApp CRM can provide that structure without removing the convenience that made WhatsApp useful in the first place.

For growing exporters, manufacturers and other international businesses, the opportunity is straightforward: keep the conversation simple for the customer, while making the process behind it much easier for the sales team to manage.

The Thai banking system remains resilient with robust levels of capital, loan loss provisions, and liquidity. In the second quarter of 2026, overall loan growth in the banking system (licensed banks and their subsidiaries) grew by 2.0% year-on-year, driven primarily by lending to large corporate in line with increased demand for working capital to absorb the impact of higher energy and raw material costs.

Meanwhile, SMEs and consumer loans continued to contract, reflecting persistently high credit risks. On loan quality, NPL (Stage 3¹) declined to 534.8 billion baht in the second quarter of 2026, mainly reflecting banks’ intensified efforts to manage problem loans. As a result, The NPL ratio remained stable at 2.82%, close to the level observed at the onset of the conflict in the Middle East. Stage 2 loans² declined to 6.78%, partly due to the migration of vulnerable borrowers into NPL status, while some borrowers previously classified as significant increase in credit risk (SICR) showed improved credit quality. At the same time, commercial banks have continued to provide support through pre-emptive debt restructuring, which has helped contain NPL formation. 

In terms of financial performance, net profits of the commercial banking system increased from the same period last year, driven mainly by higher fair value gains on financial instruments and increased securities brokerage fee income. This was complemented by lower provisioning expenses, following relatively substantial provisioning in previous periods, as well as improved operating cost management. These factors helped offset the decline in net interest income following lending rate reductions in line with the policy rate direction and continued borrower assistance.

Going forward, ongoing uncertainty related to the conflict in the Middle East and the uneven recovery of the Thai economy could continue to weigh on borrowers’ debt-servicing capacity, particularly among vulnerable SMEs and households facing income volatility and higher living costs. In this regard, close monitoring of commercial banks’ asset quality remains warranted. Nevertheless, government measures to alleviate debt burdens and continued liquidity support from financial institutions are expected to help cushion the impact on businesses and households.

Source : https://www.bot.or.th/en/news-and-media/news/news-20260818.html

Nasdaq-listed Freedom Holding Corp., led by billionaire Timur Turlov, paid $33.4 million for a 99.32% stake in Turkish Bank A.Ş.

The deal marks another step in Freedom’s international expansion and comes as the group reports a strong start to fiscal 2027: the group’s quarterly revenue rose 40% to $732.5 million. Growth in its banking and brokerage businesses is strengthening Freedom’s capacity to bring the digital ecosystem it built in Kazakhstan to new markets. Timur Turlov himself is setting the bar even higher: in his view, digital banks will eventually have to compete not so much with local players as with global technology platforms.

$33.4 Million for a Banking Platform in Türkiye

The purchase price for Turkish Bank was disclosed in Freedom Holding’s financial statements. The group paid $33.4 million for a stake of approximately 99.32%, Forbes reported, citing the holding company’s financial statements. The transaction closed on July 31, 2026, after which shareholders approved renaming Turkish Bank A.Ş. as Freedom Bank A.Ş., according to a Freedom Holding announcement.

For Freedom Holding Corp., the acquisition is not simply a purchase of an operating banking asset; it also provides a foundation for launching its ecosystem model in Türkiye. The company intends to build an ecosystem of financial and everyday services around the bank.

“In Kazakhstan, we built an ecosystem in which financial and everyday services operate within a single SuperApp, which has become the fastest-growing digital service in the country. Now we are bringing this model to Türkiye,” Turlov said after the transaction closed.

Even before the acquisition was completed, Timur Turlov noted that the potential customer base in Türkiye could be four to five times larger than in Kazakhstan. At the time, Freedom SuperApp had attracted 5.67 million users less than two years after its launch,the company reported.

Revenue Rose 40%

Freedom Holding’s financial results support its expansion plans. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, which ended June 30, 2026, Freedom Holding’s net revenue increased 40% year over year, from $524 million to $732.5 million. Assets reached $14.05 billion, up from $13.16 billion at the end of March.

Its two core financial businesses were the main drivers of growth. Revenue in the brokerage segment increased 60% to $282.6 million, while banking revenue rose 54% to $225.2 million. The Other segment, which includes telecommunications, payments, travel and other digital services, doubled its revenue to $73.9 million.

The customer base also expanded. The banking business served 5.45 million customers, the brokerage business 874,000, the insurance business 924,000, and the remaining businesses 1.5 million.

From France and Georgia to Pakistan and Mongolia

The next stage of Freedom’s international expansion is already taking shape. Freedom Holding has applied for a banking license in France and has said it is prepared to invest about €500 million in the country’s digital ecosystem. In Georgia, the company is awaiting completion of the licensing process for Freedom Bank Georgia.

In Pakistan, Timur Turlov has spoken about plans to begin the process of registering a Freedom Bank branch and, in the longer term, to build a global digital bank with an eventual presence in the United States (Kapital.kz). In Mongolia, the holding company is exploring investment opportunities in the banking and financial sectors, Interfax reported. Reuters previously described Freedom’s strategy as an expansion of financial infrastructure across a region stretching from Türkiye to Mongolia.

For Timur Turlov, however, the goal is to deploy a common technology platform across markets.

“I don’t want to build a holding company that has the same name in every country but different businesses. That would not create the synergy we are aiming for. That’s why I want the Freedom SuperApp we built in Kazakhstan to appear in other countries, so that we can fully export our technology to the markets of Türkiye, Pakistan, Europe and Georgia,” Turlov told.

According to Timur Turlov, the team is working to turn Freedom Holding’s banking system, card processing, accounting solutions and loyalty programs into a modular technology product that can be used in a new market and then adapted to local regulatory requirements. For Turlov, the ability to replicate the same technology across markets is ultimately what could allow Freedom to compete on a global rather than local scale.

The Real Competition Will Be Global Technology Platforms

By this logic, the main competition facing digital banks will come not from the bank next door but from global technology platforms.

“Google is used all over the world, and 70-80% of all AI inference is handled by one or two companies. I am sure the same thing will happen in digital banking. People will use the best technology on a global scale. Nobody will need the best bank in Kazakhstan; they will need the best bank in the world,” Timur Turlov commented.

Technology markets tend to follow a winner-takes-all dynamic, and a digital bank therefore needs to become global. Within this strategy, the $33.4 million acquisition of Turkish Bank looks modest relative to Freedom Holding’s $14.05 billion asset base but strategically significant. Freedom Holding Corp. has gained a regulated banking platform in Türkiye and an opportunity to test whether its SuperApp model, developed in Kazakhstan, can scale successfully beyond its home market. Meanwhile, the 40% increase in quarterly revenue and the expansion of its customer base provide the holding company with the financial and operational foundation for the next stage of its international expansion.

Part of the soundtrack to a day in southern California is the drone of petrol-powered gardening equipment.

Noise is one of the main reasons that cities around the US, external are banning petrol landscaping tools or encouraging electric alternatives.

These alternatives have the additional benefits of reducing carbon emissions, vibrations and the exposure of landscapers to pollution.

In addition they can mean longer working hours, as they can be used at times when residents demand quiet.

Today, I’m taking part in training run by the American Green Zone Alliance (AGZA), an organisation supporting the transition towards electric landscaping equipment.

To my surprise, the electric backpack leaf blower I strap on is not much heavier than my normal rucksack. Using the blower to herd balls around the park feels fairly intuitive, though naturally I’m much clumsier and slower than the pro landscapers.

As for noise, there’s still a buzz, but the sound is higher-pitched and not quite so loud as the familiar petrol-powered machines.

The move to electric power is attracting new companies to the market for gardening kit.

US aerospace start-up Whisper Aero is one of those firms. Its main business is electric propulsion systems for aircraft.

But in 2022, after the Covid-19 pandemic made many people more sensitive to noise, and following a couple of years of research and development, the company realised that its aerospace-grade fans would work well in leaf blowers.

“Our technology is cleaner, quieter and more efficient than other air-moving technologies that exist today,” according to Andrew Terajewicz, Whisper Aero’s director of air management. “And the leaf blower is the perfect mix of this.”

The battery on Whisper Aero’s blower lasts up to 50 minutes at full power.

The company has had to scale up its manufacturing volume in its expansion to consumer technology.

Online pre-orders of Whisper Aero’s handheld leaf blower started this year. It’s priced at the high-end of electric leaf blowers, which are often more expensive than traditional petrol versions.

But for that you get a machine which is less likely to disturb the peace.

“It is so ultra quiet yet powerful, that the brain has a hard time understanding what’s happening,” says Dan Mabe, the former landscaper who founded AGZA.

Whisper Aero aims to further develop its products, including a backpack leaf blower that would be better suited to professional landscapers.

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy was abruptly cut short Wednesday afternoon after Judge William Sullivan told jurors they were being excused due to an “unforeseen circumstance,” offering no further explanation as proceedings resumed the following morning.

Sullivan informed jurors midway through Wednesday’s session that they would be dismissed until Thursday morning, declining to specify the nature of the disruption. “This is not something we saw coming, but you’re not to speculate about what it is,” Sullivan told the panel. “You’re not to hold it against either side. It’s just something that we have to deal with.” The court went into recess at 2:15 p.m., and jurors were formally excused for the day at 2:33 p.m. Proceedings resumed Thursday at 9 a.m., though the judge had not publicly disclosed the underlying cause of Wednesday’s early dismissal.

The disruption came shortly after Sullivan ruled on a separate, contested defense request earlier in Wednesday’s session. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had sought to call Emily Thorndike, a licensed clinical social worker and former employee of McLean Hospital, the psychiatric facility where Clancy was admitted less than a month before she killed her three children in January 2023. Sullivan denied the request to call Thorndike as a witness.

Reddington had identified Thorndike as a potential witness after she publicly criticized conditions at McLean Hospital on TikTok during the trial’s early stages. He sought to introduce her testimony to counter what he characterized as misleading impressions about the quality of care at the facility, impressions he argued had been created during prosecutors’ earlier questioning of Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick Clancy.

In denying the request, Sullivan acknowledged that Thorndike appeared credible but concluded her testimony carried limited relevance to the case. According to the judge’s ruling, Thorndike had stopped working at McLean Hospital approximately a year before Clancy was admitted there, undercutting the direct evidentiary value of her firsthand knowledge of conditions at the facility during the specific period relevant to the case. Sullivan did, however, permit the defense to submit McLean Hospital records documenting staffing levels and treatment programs as an alternative means of addressing the same underlying issue Reddington had hoped to raise through Thorndike’s testimony.

Clancy, 36, has admitted to strangling her three children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan — at the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023. She has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, with her defense arguing she was not criminally responsible for the killings because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis at the time. Prosecutors contend she planned the killings and bears legal responsibility for her actions.

Wednesday’s abrupt dismissal added another notable moment to what has already been an emotionally intense trial, now well into its second week of testimony. The proceedings have featured extensive witness accounts from Clancy’s family members, former nanny, treating psychiatric providers, first responders and expert witnesses, painting a detailed picture of her mental health decline in the months preceding the killings.

Supporters of Clancy have continued gathering outside Plymouth Superior Court throughout the trial. According to coverage of the proceedings, Clancy’s attorneys and her supporters maintain that she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings, a position central to the defense’s argument that she should not be held criminally responsible under Massachusetts law.

Wednesday’s session was not the first time the trial has featured contentious exchanges over which witnesses would be permitted to testify or what evidence jurors would be allowed to consider. Throughout the proceedings, Sullivan has periodically ruled on a range of evidentiary disputes between prosecutors and the defense, reflecting the complexity of a case that has required extensive expert psychiatric testimony alongside more conventional witness accounts from family members and first responders.

The specific nature of Wednesday’s “unforeseen circumstance” remained undisclosed as of Thursday morning, with Sullivan’s instruction to jurors explicitly cautioning them against speculating about its cause or allowing it to influence their assessment of either the prosecution’s or the defense’s case. Such instructions are a standard judicial practice used to prevent unrelated courtroom or logistical disruptions from improperly affecting jury deliberations, though the lack of public explanation has left the specific cause of Wednesday’s early dismissal a matter of ongoing curiosity among those following the closely watched trial.

With proceedings having resumed Thursday morning, the trial continues to draw significant public and media attention, both for the graphic and emotionally difficult nature of the testimony presented and for the broader legal questions surrounding how postpartum psychosis is treated under the state’s criminal responsibility standards. The case has also drawn scrutiny toward the mental health care system more broadly, including the adequacy of psychiatric treatment Clancy received in the weeks before the killings, a theme underscored by Wednesday’s dispute over the proposed McLean Hospital testimony.

As of Thursday, no timeline had been publicly indicated for when the prosecution’s or defense’s respective presentation of evidence might conclude, though the trial has already extended well beyond its originally anticipated length, reflecting the scope of expert and lay witness testimony both sides have called to address the central and contested question of Clancy’s mental state at the time of the killings.