How to use the WhatsApp Business API, and what it costs here

The WhatsApp Business API is WhatsApp with no phone in it. Your business number lives on Meta's servers, you reach it through a provider's software, and any number of staff or systems can send and receive on it. Every message your business starts already costs cents apiece, and from 1 October the replies do too, and this is how to use the WhatsApp Business API once the free app has run out.

Before you start

• A Meta Business account, verified. Meta has been tightening identity checks this year, as the Guardian reported on 12 September on advertiser verification, and business verification for the API is its own process with its own paperwork. Expect to upload company registration documents.
• A phone number that is not currently on the WhatsApp app. You can migrate the existing business number, but it leaves the handset for good.
• A provider. Almost nobody calls Meta's API directly. A Business Solution Provider gives you an inbox, templates and a bill.
• A budget line. The free app costs nothing. The API costs per message for anything you start, and from October it also costs per reply beyond a monthly allowance.

Step 1: pick the provider before the number

Providers differ on three things: the monthly platform fee, the markup they add to Meta's per-message price, and whether they connect to the accounting package you already run. Wati's cheapest plan is $99 a month on annual billing, about R1 600, and GotBot's entry plan is R6 980 a month. Local guides put the small-business band at roughly R750 to R3 000. Ask each one for the Meta rate and their markup as two separate numbers. If they will only quote a blended price, move on.

Step 2: verify the Meta Business account

In Meta Business Suite, open Settings, then Security Centre, then Start verification. Upload the CIPC registration and proof of address. Verification takes days, not hours, and nothing else can proceed until it is done.

Step 3: register the number

The provider walks you through adding the number to the WhatsApp Business Account. Meta sends a code to the number, so the SIM must be reachable that day. If it is the number currently on a handset, this is the point at which the app on that handset stops working.

Step 4: write and submit templates

Any message your business starts, as opposed to a reply, must be a template Meta has approved. A payment reminder, a delivery notification, a quote follow-up. Write them as you would say them, with placeholders for the name and the amount. Allow a day for approval. A template that reads as marketing is priced as marketing, which is the expensive category.

Step 5: connect the inbox to the people

The provider's inbox is where staff answer. Set up one login per person, so that the record shows who said what. This is the first thing the API gives you that the app never could.

Step 6: connect the system that holds the answers

The second thing the API gives you is that software can send messages. Point it at the invoice system first: when an invoice is raised, a template goes out with the amount and the reference. That one connection removes the most common reason staff type into WhatsApp at all.

What it costs in rands

Meta's pricing documentation has charged per template message since 1 July 2025. What changes on 1 October 2026 is the reply. A service message, the free-form answer a person types inside the 24-hour window, is billed at the market's utility rate once a business number has used its 1 000 free service messages for the month. A utility template sent inside that window is billed too.

Meta bills in dollars. For South Africa the marketing message is $0.0379, about R0.62. The utility message, which is also the reply price, rises on the same day from $0.0076 to $0.0095, from about R0.12 to about R0.15. Ten thousand marketing messages is about R6 200. Ten thousand payment reminders, priced as utility, is about R1 500 from October.

Those are conversions at R16.24 to the dollar, not a rand price list, and the rate moves. Treat the ratio as the durable fact: a marketing message costs about four times a utility message, so classifying a template correctly is worth real money. Our earlier piece on WhatsApp reply costs made the point that the bill is set by how many messages your business needs to close one job, and that has not changed.

What breaks here

The reply charge. Until October a customer's message opened a window in which your answers were free. After it, every message your side sends past the 1 000 free replies a number gets each month is billed. Forty conversations a day at four replies each uses up that allowance in about a week. A team that asks the customer for the reference, then the address, then the amount owing, is paying three times for information the business already has.

POPIA on the connected record. Pulling the customer's balance into the chat means personal information moving between systems and through a provider. Get the provider's data location and processing terms in writing before step 6.

Bandwidth is not the constraint, the handset was. The API works from a laptop at reception on fibre, which is a better place to answer 40 conversations than one phone. Field staff still need a way in, and that is a provider app on their phones, not the WhatsApp app.

When this stops being enough

The API solves the phone problem and creates a data problem. Once messages go out automatically from the invoicing system, the customer number, the account balance and the delivery status need to agree with each other. If they do not, the template sends the wrong amount to the wrong person, at 62 cents a time. That is the point at which the work is joining the systems you already run, and it is the work Zorah does for South African businesses before any message is automated. The sales and CRM side is where the customer record that feeds those templates has to live.

On Monday, ask your would-be provider two questions: the Meta rate and their markup, separately, and where the message data is stored. Their answers decide whether the API is a tool or a second bill.