How to Verify WhatsApp Business Account? Step by Step Guide
Owning a WhatsApp Business account can do wonders for your business. Not only does it give you access to a messaging and calling platform that prides itself with over 2 billion active users, but it can also provide you with important insights into the effectiveness of your customer communication strategies. So how to verify a WhatsApp Business account and take full advantage of it?
Quick Google search will hail plenty of results but not many of them will get straight to the point. Yes, you can download the WhatsApp Business app, register your business credentials, and verify your phone number for free, but this will not get you the much desired green tick next to your business’ name in your profile and chat thread headers.
Sure, a small and local business might not have a problem with this. However, a large or growing company that aims to spread its outreach to more users globally might want to set itself apart from the crowd and prove it is worthy of their trust as a genuine business.
While the regular WhatsApp Business account that you get through the free WhatsApp Business app has benefits on its own. Having an official WhatsApp Business account through the WhatsApp Business API will get you that green checkmark in your business profile and more. At the moment, not many businesses can boast about this.
The coveted ‘green tick’
This is how the messaging giant itself defines a verified business account:
This means that only an officially verified WhatsApp Business account can proudly display the coveted green badge next to its name. You might have noticed that some businesses already have it, but how exactly did they get it? How to verify a WhatsApp Business account and get to show off your own fancy green badge to prove it?
If you want to get yourself a genuine, verified WhatsApp business account with the green checkmark, you’ll have to take a different and slightly more complex approach than simply downloading, installing, and signing up with the free app.
You’ll need to take the road that will require getting a WhatsApp Business API. It will involve some more effort and a bit of money but it’s ultimately worth it. Stay with us and we’ll show you exactly how to verify WhatsApp business account, get your very own green badge, and much, much more.
WhatsApp Business verification
The process of WhatsApp Business verification looks like this:
- Sign up with a business solution provider (BSP) like WATI.
- Create a Business Manager account.
- Give the BSP your Business Manager ID.
- Allow the BSP to send messages on your behalf.
- Verify your business, policy, and display name.
1. Sign up with WATI or any other business solution provider (BSP).
A BSP is a platform that can connect your business with the WhatsApp Business API, providing all the advantages of WhatsApp and many more. Such a platform has the resources and is authorized by WhatsApp to conduct all the necessary checks into the legitimacy of your business. Specifically, a BSP has the power to:
- Create, activate, and manage your official WhatsApp Business account
- Connect your WhatsApp Business Account with the WhatsApp Business API
- Manage your customer messages in a unified inbox
- Provide a place for your team members’ collaboration
- Analyze and deliver valuable data-driven insights.
2. Create a Business Manager account.
In order to enable the BSP to verify your business with WhatsApp on your behalf, you’ll need to take care of some things on your side first. Specifically, this includes creating a Business Manager account.
A Facebook tool that assists you in organizing and managing your business, Business Manager requires that you first have a Facebook profile so you can use your Facebook username and password to sign up. This way, the login process is made more secure than using only an email and password.
Visit the website https://business.facebook.com/overview and go to Create Account. Here you’ll enter your name, your business’s name, email address, and other business details. You can only have up to two Business Manager accounts at the same time, so if you need more, ask someone else from your business to create additional accounts.
3. Give the BSP your Business Manager ID.
To proceed with creating and verifying your WhatsApp Business account, your BSP will need your Business Manager ID. This information is available in your Business Manager’s Business Settings → Business Info, under Business Manager Account Name. When you find it, email the BSP your Business Manager ID.
4. Allow the BSP to send messages on your behalf.
Once it has your Business Manager ID, the BSP will need your consent to message your customers on your behalf. It will send you a “messaging on behalf of” request via email and Business Manager platform. Approve it through Business Settings → Requests, under Received.
5. Verify your business, policy, and display name.
After you’ve approved your BSP’s request, you will need to verify your business’ name and policy in the Business Manager so that WhatsApp can see it’s genuine. You can do this in your Business Settings → Security Center, under Verification → Start Verification. This option will be grayed out until you approve your BSP’s “messaging on behalf of”.
Your display name has to be in line with WhatsApp Commerce and Business policies and follow the guidelines set by the company. Also note that, once you’ve registered your business’ contact name on WhatsApp under the official Business account, it might not be possible to change it without losing the verified status.
Once you’ve entered your business details, selected the business type, and entered your phone number, you’ll receive a verification code (via phone call, text message, or email). Submit it to complete the process and proceed with sending the first message with your BSP.
WATI as your choice BSP
Hopefully, this article gave you a precise enough answer on how to verify WhatsApp Business account. While you can also do this by building and running your own solution, we don’t recommend it unless you’re well versed in programming. Instead, why not take advantage of the existing solutions provided by a platform like WATI?
Not only does it take care of creating, verifying, and managing your Business account, allowing you to get your own WhatsApp green checkmark, but it also provides the perfect environment for your team members to conduct all of the business’ communications with clients from one place.
Thanks to WATI’s Team Inbox and Dashboard, multiple agents can sign in at the same time and respond to customers’ queries, send/receive multimedia, or even set templates for quick replies to most common questions. Furthermore, the platform offers detailed analyses of all the interactions in the form of pie charts, bar graphs, and bell curves. The Team Inbox is also available on-the-go, in the form of the WATI Business app.
If you’d like to know more, hit us up — we’d love to hear from you! Or better yet, sign up for the platform and get the first look at all the perks provided by the WhatsApp Business API.
WATI is one of the products of Clare.AI, the startup and online tool combining artificial intelligence and machine learning with proprietary natural language processing technology to build high-quality, award-winning customer communication solutions. The company is trusted by multinational enterprises and Fortune 500 companies.
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