Businesses are required to obtain opt-in before sending proactive notifications to customers. Businesses can obtain opt-in in a multitude of ways, both on and off WhatsApp. Ultimately, we want to help people receive useful information from businesses they want to hear from.

Opt-in methods such as via your website, interactive voice response (IVR) flows or in a WhatsApp thread are acceptable.

Requirements

Businesses must follow the below requirements when obtaining opt-in:

• Businesses must clearly state that a person is opting in to receive messages from the business over WhatsApp
• Businesses must clearly state the business’ name that a person is opting in to receive messages from
• Businesses must comply with applicable law

Opt-In Methods

As long as the opt-in method meets the above requirements, it will be policy compliant. The following are examples of supported opt-in methods:

• SMS
• Website
• In a WhatsApp thread
• By phone (using an interactive voice response (IVR) flow)
• In person or on paper (customers can sign a physical document to opt in)

We strongly recommend that businesses continue to optimize for the user experience when designing opt-in flows.

Helpful Tips

Businesses should continue to optimize for the user experience while obtaining opt-in. For example, businesses should:

• Explicitly call out the types of messages a person is opting into (e.g., delivery updates)
• Avoid messaging people too frequently
• Provide instructions for how customers can opt out and honor these requests
• Monitor your quality rating, especially when rolling out new opt-in methods

Maintaining High Quality

Driving high quality conversations between people and businesses is still a top priority. People can block or report businesses and our systems will rate limit businesses if the business’ quality is low for a sustained period of time. We may also reactively evaluate a business’ opt-in flows, including user feedback, to flag policy violations and develop additional types of enforcement over time.

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