Your number

Your number is the WhatsApp Business API number you send from and customers reply to. Broadcasts, Ecomm+ messages, chatbot flows and Live Chat all run on it, and your whole team can handle chats on the same number at once.

Three things belong to your number, and each shapes what you can do with it.

Display name

Your display name is what customers see first on your WhatsApp Business profile. It is how they recognise your brand.

The rules

• It must have a relationship with your business.
• It must not break WhatsApp's Commerce and Business policies.

A name that breaks these rules is rejected.

A display name can also be for one department of your business, such as Finance, Sales or Customer Support.

Change it

You change the display name in Facebook, in WhatsApp Manager. You can change it up to 10 times in 30 days.

1. Go to Facebook Business Manager and select your business.
2. Click WhatsApp Accounts and choose WhatsApp Manager.
3. In WhatsApp Manager, click Account Tools.
4. In the left-most menu, click Phone Numbers.
5. Under the Name column, hover over your current display name and click the pencil icon.
6. In Edit Display Name, enter the new display name.
7. Click Next.

If the new name follows the formatting rules, it changes in 2 to 3 hours.

More than one number

A business can have more than one WhatsApp Business API number, for example one for each department. Each one is on a different mobile number.

Numbers under the same Facebook Business Manager share one messaging limit. A big broadcast from one uses up the limit for all of them. See Messaging limits and quality.

When to use this

Use the name customers already know. The name on your website, your packaging and your Instagram. A customer who gets a message from a name they do not recognise is more likely to block it than read it.

Choose the name carefully, then leave it. You can change it 10 times in 30 days, but every change is a moment when regular customers see a name they do not expect.

Name numbers by what they do if you run more than one. "Brand Support" and "Brand Orders" tell customers which chat to use, and keep your team's chats apart.

Watch the quality rating from day one. A new number starts with a low limit, and it only grows while customers are responding well. How you treat your first few thousand customers decides how quickly you can reach the rest. See Messaging limits and quality.