WhatsApp Account policy violations and enforcement

Businesses using the WhatsApp business platform must adhere to the Business and Commerce policies determined by Meta.

If businesses are found to be violating these policies there is a chance of their account being restricted from adding phone numbers, sending messages or being banned from the platform.

The full list of policy violations can be found here.

Account Restrictions

WhatsApp Business Accounts will initially get a warning with information on the policy they violated. If Business Accounts repeatedly violate policies, they may start seeing functionality restrictions that increase in duration. This will generally escalate as follows:

• 1 or 3 day block on sending business-initiated messages and adding additional phone numbers to the account

• 5 or 7 day block on sending business-initiated messages and responding to customer-initiated messages and adding additional phone numbers to the account

• Eventually be permanently disabled from the WhatsApp Business Platform, if the business does not make changes after multiple warnings and feature limits

In some cases, where there is evidence of a policy violation that causes severe harm to users, such as child exploitation, terrorism, or the sale of illegal drugs, WhatsApp will immediately disable these Business accounts from the Business Platform.

Notifications

If your business has violated a policy or received an account of restriction or ban you will be notified as follows:

1. If you have access to the Business Manager:

2. 1. You will see this in the business manager notification center and as a banner in the WhatsApp manager

   2. All admins in the business manager will receive an email notification.

3. In addition all customers will be notified through their dashboard and can subscribe to notifications from MessageBird by subscribing to email and webhook notifications in the notifications settings page

Appeals process

If you believe your account policy violation has been received in error all violations can be appealed within 90 days of being received.

If you have access to your WhatsApp business account you can see a history of violations and start an appeal via the Business Manager as follows:

1. Log in to Business Manager.

2. Click More > Account Quality > Facebook Business Accounts.

3. In the WhatsApp Accounts section, click the WhatsApp Business Account that shows “Account Issues” in its "Status" column:

   

4. For any individual issue, click See Details to view the policy that was violated and how to avoid this type of violation in the future:

   

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Violation updates include the following information:

• Summary of policy violated and link to the policy itself.

• Examples of which content is allowed or disallowed based on that policy.

• Whether there are any active restrictions on the account and what happens if the violation happens again.

• How to avoid future policy violations and links to helpful resources.

• How to appeal.

If you do not have access to your WhatsApp business account and this is managed via our customer success team then you can contact the support team for assistance with the appeals process.