Mubasher: Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to merge the underlying messaging infrastructure of the social media giant’s messenger as well as WhatsApp and Instagram, a news report said.

The three messaging services, to which end-to-end encryption would be incorporated, would still operate as standalone applications, the New York Times (NYT) reported, citing four sources involved in the move.

After these changes, a Facebook user would be able to send an encrypted message to another who only has a WhatsApp account, the NYT said.

Facebook is in the early stages of the work, while it looks to complete it by the end of this year or in early next year, the NYT noted.