To apply for the WhatsApp Marketing API, four main conditions must be met: firstly, the business must provide official commercial documents for verification, such as a company registration certificate (issued within the last 6 months); secondly, a verified Meta Business Manager account is required (recommended to be registered for over 30 days); thirdly, the WhatsApp Business account review must be passed (requires binding a mobile number starting with +86); finally, a detailed marketing plan must be submitted, including sending frequency (daily limit of 1,000 messages), target audience, and opt-out mechanism. It is recommended to allow 14 working days for the review period and prepare a 2.5% message rejection rate buffer.

Pre-Application Checklist

According to official Meta data, the number of enterprise users of the WhatsApp Business API globally increased by 47% in 2023, but the initial application rejection rate was as high as 35%, mainly due to incomplete or non-compliant information. If you plan to apply for the WhatsApp Marketing API, preparing the following content in advance can increase the approval rate by more than 60% and shorten the review cycle (usually reduced from 5-7 working days to 2-3 days).

First, the business must have officially registered company details, including a business license or commercial registration certificate. Meta requires the company to have been established for at least 6 months; the approval rate for new companies (less than half a year old) is only 12%. If your company’s business scope involves finance, healthcare, or high-risk industries, you also need to provide additional industry licenses, such as a payment license or clinic license.

Second, prepare a dedicated business phone number, not a personal number or a virtual number (like Google Voice). It is recommended to purchase a new SIM card and ensure that the number has not been registered with WhatsApp for 30 days, otherwise it will trigger the system’s risk control. According to tests, the failure rate for re-registering with an old number exceeds 80%. This number will be used later to receive Meta’s verification code, so it must be kept active long-term.

Third, the company’s official website or App is a key review indicator. Meta will check if the website has a privacy policy page, contact information, and genuine business content. If the website traffic is less than 1000 UV/month, or the page information is incomplete, it is likely to be deemed a shell company. It is recommended to upload at least 5 product or service descriptions and ensure the website loading speed is within 3 seconds (over 70% of rejection cases are related to website performance).

Draft customer service script templates in advance. The WhatsApp API requires businesses to commit to replying to user messages within 24 hours, and an overdue rate exceeding 15% will lead to account throttling. Prepare standard answers for common questions (such as return policies, payment methods) and set up automated reply rules. Data shows that businesses with predefined scripts can reduce the average response time to 2 hours, and customer satisfaction increases by 40%.

This preparation work takes about 3-5 days to complete but can significantly reduce the probability of needing to resubmit materials later (resubmission review delays 7-10 days). If the budget allows, it is recommended to directly use a Meta-certified agent (such as Twilio, MessageBird), whose expedited channels can compress the overall process to 48 hours, but the cost is 20-30% higher than self-application.

How to Fill in Company Information

According to official Meta statistics, about 28% of WhatsApp Business API applications were rejected in 2023 due to “incorrect company information,” with 65% of the issues being an unclear description of the business scope, and 22% due to the registered address not matching the actual operating location. Each time a document needs to be resubmitted when filling in company information, the review time is extended by an average of 5-7 days, while complete and accurate information can increase the first-time approval rate to 89%.

Key Field Filling Specifications

The Company Address is a key focus of the review. If an office address is filled in instead of the registered address, you need to upload the lease agreement + utility bill (within the last 1 month). Meta will verify with Google Street View. If the sign name is found to be inconsistent (e.g., A company sign but B company filled in), the rejection rate is 92%. It is recommended to simultaneously mark the same address on the “Contact Us” page of the official website, which can reduce the chance of manual review intervention by 40%.

The choice of Industry Category affects the message sending limit. For example, e-commerce can send 1,000 template messages daily, but the financial industry is limited to only 200. If the actual business spans multiple categories, the item with the highest revenue share should be selected (must be ≥50%), and subcategories should be supplemented in the remarks field. Incorrect classification may lead to subsequent feature lockouts, and the average time for unblocking is 14 days.

When filling in the Contact Person, it is recommended to provide a corporate email address (such as [email protected]); applications using Gmail or QQ mail have a 33% higher chance of being asked for additional documents. The phone number must include the country code (e.g., +886-2-12345678), with the extension number marked in the format “ext.123”. Tests show that 17% of application forms without the country code are rejected due to inability to verify.

Review Process Explanation

Meta data shows that the average review time for the WhatsApp Business API in 2023 was 5.2 days, but the actual situation varies greatly: applications with complete data pass the fastest in 8 hours, while problematic cases require an average of 2.3 resubmissions, dragging on to over 14 days. More troublingly, 38% of first-time applicants are asked to resubmit during the “manual review” stage due to unfamiliarity with the process, wasting 72 hours on this step alone.

Critical Detail: When your application form enters the system, it first undergoes AI preliminary screening (accounting for 20% of the total time), mainly checking basic items such as document format and company name consistency. If the resolution of the business license scan is below 200dpi, or the company website loading speed exceeds 4 seconds, the system will directly flag it as “high-risk” and transfer it to the manual queue—meaning your waiting time immediately increases by 300%.

After passing the AI preliminary screening, it enters the substantive review phase, where the 72-hour golden period determines success or failure. Meta’s compliance team will randomly check three key points: whether the company’s registration location matches the country of operation (e.g., filling in a US company but the server IP is in India), whether the message template involves promotional sensitive words (e.g., “limited-time discount” has a trigger rate of 61%), and the historical record of customer service response time (if tested with a personal number, a response delay exceeding 1 hour will incur demerits). If an issue is found at this time, you will receive an email requiring resubmission within 48 hours, and cases that fail to respond within the deadline will be automatically archived, requiring a 7-day cooling-off period to reapply.

Even after approval, 83% of businesses encounter the problem of “insufficient template message sending limits” in the first month. This is because the system automatically allocates a daily quota of 200-1000 messages based on the industry category, but the actual demand is often 3 times higher. At this point, it is necessary to submit customer conversation records from the past 30 days to prove the demand, and the approval takes another 5 days.

Time Management Advice: Submit the application between 10:00-12:00 AM (UTC+0) on Tuesdays, when the system load is the lowest, and the AI preliminary screening speed is 40% faster. Avoid submitting at the end of the month, as the accumulated case volume that month will delay manual review by 1.5 days. If urgent opening is required, a premium fee of $300 can be paid to skip 50% of the queue process, but this is only available through Meta’s partner agency channels (not an option for self-application).

Common Issues Compiled

According to official Meta statistics, 72% of customer service inquiries submitted by WhatsApp Business API users in 2023 were concentrated in 5 recurring issues, with “review failure” accounting for as high as 38%, and issues related to “message sending limits” growing at a rate of 15% per month. If solutions to these problems are known in advance, 60% of back-and-forth communication time can be reduced, and the account opening success rate can be increased to over 85%.

High-Frequency Issues and Data-Driven Solutions

The most common hidden mine for Review Rejected is “company name inconsistency with the website.” For example, the license is registered as “ABC Co., Ltd.”, but the website copyright says “ABC Group.” This discrepancy leads to 92% of applications being automatically rejected by the system. The solution is to unify all public information, including the Google My Business page. Doing so can increase the secondary submission approval rate to 78%.

Regarding Number Verification Failure, actual data shows that using a virtual operator (such as Lyca Mobile) SIM card has a 33% higher failure rate than using a physical telecom operator (such as Chunghwa Telecom). It is recommended to prioritise local mainstream telecom operators, and the SIM card balance should be kept above $5 to avoid being judged as an invalid number due to arrears. Verification SMS messages usually arrive within 2 minutes. If it takes longer than 15 minutes to receive it, there is an 87% chance the number is blacklisted, and a new number should be used to retry.

When facing a delay in Template Message Review, the key is to avoid high-risk words. Statistics show that templates containing words like “free,” “win,” or “last chance” have a first-time submission approval rate of only 12%. However, switching to neutral phrases like “Check the latest information” or “Exclusive update notification” can boost the approval rate to 68%. Additionally, it is recommended to keep each template message length within 512 characters; exceeding this length will extend the review time by 1.5 times.

If the Sending Limit is Insufficient, most businesses are unaware they can proactively apply for an adjustment. As long as customer conversation records from the past 30 days are provided, proving that the existing quota utilization rate is above 90%, Meta usually approves an expansion of 50-200% of the quota within 5 days. However, it should be noted that the expansion review standards are stricter for the financial and healthcare industries, requiring the submission of additional permission documents from the industry regulatory authority, which extends the processing time to 14 days.