Whatsapp icon integrated with an authentication API, showcased on a green square.

Channel | WhatsApp Business

With more than 2 billion people using WhatsApp around the world to send 60 billion messages every day, the chat app has revolutionized the way we communicate. With an enterprise-grade API, companies can now send notifications and provide customer service through WhatsApp in a secure, reliable, and customer-friendly way.

Create a Display Name

Display Names do what you’d expect: They display the relevant business name when customers connect with a company via WhatsApp. Display Name formats are strictly controlled to make sure the company’s WhatsApp presence is recognizable and trusted and provide a consistent user experience across the platform.

The Display Name must create a certificate, without which the WhatsApp Business API client won’t work. You can get a base64-encoded certificate or download a certificate file. This is needed later in the registration process, so be sure to keep it safe.

A Display Name must have a clear relationship with the business or a service, department, or test account within it. Organizations can include charities, churches, professional associations, and both for-profit and non-profit companies. 

When setting up your WhatsApp Business Profile, you will need to define the Display Name of your business. Your Display Name should be the same or similar to your Facebook Business page.

ℹ️ All display names should have a clear relationship with your business or a service, department, or test account within it. And, of course, it should not violate WhatsApp Commerce and Business policies.

1. A Display Name should represent a business or an organization*

  • A business service, department, test accounts
  • Organizations include charitable organizations, churches/parishes, professional associations, and media organizations, not-for-profit organizations.

* Organizations with a government affiliation will need to be approved by WhatsApp.

2. A Display Name must

  • Have grammatically correct capitalization and may not include all capitals, except for acronyms. Example:*
    • Not accepted: NEW CITY COMPUTERS
    • Accepted: New City Computers
  • Not have variations with spacing. An example for a business, “Lil’Cupcakes“:
    • Accepted: Lil’Cupcakes
    • Not accepted: Lil’ Cupcakes (added a space ‘ ’ when an external business name does not contain one”)
  • Not have extra punctuation*
  • not include emojis*
  • not include character symbols such as trademark designations*
  • must contain a minimum of 3 characters. An example for a business, “KKT Sir”:
    • Accepted: KKT Sir
    • Not accepted: Kkt
  • not be in URL format*

* Note: These rules do not apply if the business or organization already brand this way

3. Display names NOT eligible for WhatsApp Business

  • an employee or a person’s full name
  • a generic term (Example: Fashion)
  • a generic geographic location (Example: New York)
  • a slogan or a long description

4. Consistency with external branding

A display name must have consistent branding with external sources (e.g., a company’s website). An example for a product line named “Fresh Produce Cold Pressed Juices”:

  • Accepted: Fresh Produce Cold Pressed Juices (how it is branded on your website)
  • Not accepted: Fresh Produce Juices (you changed branding by removing ‘Cold Pressed’)

5. Clear relationship with your business

A display name must have a clear relationship with your business (must be referred to on the business’s website or external media references). For example:

  • Accepted: Name of a charity mentioned on a non-profit organization’s website
  • Not accepted: Name of a charity not mentioned on any external websites

ℹ️  Depending on the type of business account, the user will see the display name in different ways.

6. Options when you need to register a Display Name different from your Brand

When companies expect to get an approved Display Name that is essentially different from the Brand, these are a few helpful tips and their execution level.

Easy and fast option:

  • You accept the Display Name that is directly connected with your brand and use the description fields and profile logo to highlight more information about the project/business.
  • You create something like “Display Name by Brand Name” to associate your desired display and brand names.

Middle-level execution (may take a few days):

  • Register your own Facebook Business Manager Account for the sub-brand / product/project. This option is widely used for companies that work as agencies for other Brands.

Hard and uncertain:

  • We can try to get an exceptional ruling that would allow two brands of different companies in the same Display name. For this, you have to provide tyntec with documents that prove the joint project between the two companies/projects/brands, which we can show to WhatsApp to appeal for an exception.