WhatsApp billing setup
Add a payment method to your WhatsApp Business Account so broadcasts and business-initiated messages can be delivered. What Meta charges, conversation categories, and why the first send fails without it.
WhatsApp conversation charges are paid by you, directly to Meta. We do not resell them and take no margin on them.
Incoming messages and your replies within the 24-hour window cost nothing. Business-initiated messages — broadcasts, reminders, notifications — do, and they will not send until a payment method is on the account.
Adding a payment method
- Go to business.facebook.com
- Open Billing & payments (or Billing Hub)
- Select WhatsApp Accounts → your account → Payment settings
- Add a card or configure a credit line
Cards issued in India work. Meta charges in your account currency, typically postpaid against a billing threshold.
Until this is done, broadcasts fail with a payment error. The dashboard shows a banner about it, which disappears automatically once a real send succeeds — it is driven by actual send outcomes rather than a guess.
What Meta charges for
Meta bills per conversation, a 24-hour window, priced by category:
| Category | When it applies | Relative cost |
|---|---|---|
| Service | The customer messaged you first | Cheapest, often free |
| Utility | Order updates, appointment reminders, receipts | Low |
| Authentication | OTPs and verification codes | Low |
| Marketing | Promotions, offers, re-engagement | Highest |
Rates vary by country. Indian rates are among the lowest globally.
Keeping the bill down
- Categorise honestly. Utility is cheaper than marketing, and mislabelling gets templates rejected anyway.
- Encourage inbound. Put your number on your site, Google Business Profile and receipts. Customer-initiated service conversations are the cheapest kind, and the AI answers them free within the window.
- Reply inside 24 hours. Free-form replies in the window cost nothing extra.
- Do not message cold lists. Expensive, ineffective, and damaging to the quality rating that governs how much you can send at all.
- Use Flows. One in-chat form replaces a long back-and-forth.
Messaging limits
New numbers start at roughly 250 business-initiated conversations per day. The tier rises automatically — to 1,000, then 10,000, then 100,000 and unlimited — as you send consistently without being blocked or reported.
You cannot buy your way up a tier. It is earned through quality.
What we charge, separately
The platform fee is separate from Meta's conversation charges and is deliberately kept affordable — no per-seat cost, no per-feature charges. See Pricing.
Need it to work differently?
The platform is the starting point, not the ceiling. Tell us what your process needs and we will build it — at a price we will negotiate.