WhatsApp Business Account (WABA)

What is a WhatsApp Business Account (WABA)?

A WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) is the Meta-side account through which a company uses the WhatsApp Business Platform: it holds the company’s WhatsApp business phone number, message templates and messaging settings.

How does a WhatsApp Business Account work?

Every business that sends messages through the WhatsApp Business Platform does it through an account on Meta’s side that sits inside a Meta business portfolio. It groups the assets that make WhatsApp messaging work: the business phone number and its display name, message templates, quality ratings and messaging limits.

In 2026 Meta introduced a new account model that splits this into two parts. A WhatsApp account holds a single business phone number with its display name, quality rating and messaging limit, and is always owned by the business. Messaging accounts hold message templates, billing and metrics, and each partner the business works with gets its own Messaging account. The new model reached all businesses by mid-October 2026.

The split matters when you change providers. Migrating a phone number from one partner to another isn’t supported in the new model: the business shares its WhatsApp account with the new partner in Meta Business Suite instead, and can share it with up to five partners. Templates belong to the Messaging account in which they were created, so they usually have to be re-created with the new partner.

Example

A retailer changing providers shares its WhatsApp account with the new partner in Meta Business Suite, keeps the previous partner’s access until cutover, and re-creates its order-update templates from its own export.