WhatsApp Business API Features for Customer Engagement: What Is Available in 2026

Last verified against Meta's developer documentation on 7 October 2026.

Which WhatsApp Business API features actually improve customer engagement?

The features that do the most for customer engagement are the ones that let a customer finish a task without leaving the chat. In 2026 that means six groups of capability: interactive messages (buttons, lists, carousels), WhatsApp Flows for structured forms, template messages for timely outbound updates, catalog and payment tools in the markets that support them, voice calling through the Calling API, and AI-assisted replies with a clean handoff to a person.

Whether you can use each one depends on three things: your market, your account's messaging limit and quality standing, and how Meta bills that message type. That third point changed on 1 October 2026. Free-form replies inside the 24-hour customer service window were free for almost two years. They are now billed per message after a monthly free allowance, and utility templates sent inside that window are billed too. Many articles written in 2025, including the earlier version of this one, describe the old rules.

This guide replaces those stale claims with dated, checkable ones. It covers what each feature does, where it is available, what it costs, where it breaks, and how to choose between them. It does not try to cover how to measure engagement, how to design a full customer journey or how to grow a business on WhatsApp. Those topics have their own pages, linked where they matter.

What counts as a "feature" in this guide?

We use the word in a practical sense: a capability of the WhatsApp Business Platform that changes what a customer can do in the conversation, or how fast your business can respond. It helps to sort them into three layers.

Message formats are the building blocks: plain text, media, reply buttons, list menus, call-to-action URL buttons, location and address requests, product messages and media carousels. They decide how a single message looks and what the customer can tap.

Interaction tools sit on top of the formats and complete a task. WhatsApp Flows collect structured information in a form-like screen. Payment features take money inside the chat in supported markets. The Calling API puts a voice conversation in the same thread as your messages.

Automation and identity decide who or what is answering and how the customer is recognised. This covers AI-powered replies, human handoff, your verified business name, and the newer business-scoped user IDs and usernames that are changing how customers are identified in your systems.

Everything below assumes you use the WhatsApp Business Platform (Cloud API) through a Business Solution Provider or a direct integration. The consumer-style WhatsApp Business app is a different product with a different feature set, although Meta documents a coexistence path for businesses that want both on one number.

Which features are available where? A market-by-market view

Feature availability on WhatsApp is not uniform. The table below shows what Meta's documentation says as of 7 October 2026. "Documented" means Meta publishes a dedicated guide for that market, not that every business in the market is automatically eligible. WhatsApp Business API features for customer engagement

Two points deserve emphasis. First, pricing and some rules are decided by the recipient's country calling code, not by where your business is based. A company in Bengaluru messaging customers in the UAE is subject to UAE rates and rules for those messages. Second, the "where" of a feature can change quarterly. Meta may update pricing only on the first day of each quarter, which is why the dates in this guide matter.

How do I check what is enabled on my number?

Start in WhatsApp Manager. The messaging limits panel under account tools shows your current limit, and the Flows editor lives in the same area. Through the API, you can request the messaging limit field on your phone number, and the health status endpoint helps diagnose calling and sending problems. If your provider manages the account, ask them for a screenshot or export of your limit, quality rating, enabled products and billing currency. Do this before you commit to a feature roadmap.

What rules decide what you are allowed to send?

Every feature below sits inside a small set of rules. If these are wrong, nothing else works.

The 24-hour customer service window. When a customer messages you, a window opens and resets with each new message from them. Inside it you can send any message type, including free-form text, interactive messages and media. Outside it you can send only approved templates. Under Meta's documentation, a customer who calls you or accepts your call also opens or refreshes the window.

Templates and categories. Templates fall into three categories: marketing, utility and authentication. Meta can reassign a template's category, and by using a template you accept the charge for the category applied at that time. Review categories after approval, not just at submission.

Opt-in. Meta publishes guidance on obtaining opt-in. Whatever your provider's tooling does, you remain responsible for being able to show how and when a customer agreed to hear from you.

Messaging limits. Limits cap how many unique customers you can reach with business-initiated messages in a moving 24-hour period, and they are set at the business portfolio level, shared by all numbers in the portfolio. A new portfolio starts at 250. You can move to 2,000 by verifying the business, having your partner verify it, or sending 2,000 delivered template messages to unique customers within 30 days at high quality. After that, limits rise automatically (to 10,000, then 100,000, then unlimited) if your message quality is high and you used at least half your limit in the last seven days. Meta says an increase arrives within six hours once criteria are met. One practical consequence: one busy number can consume the whole portfolio's capacity. Meta has also deprecated the old messaging limit tier field, so older scripts that read it need updating.

Quality and frequency. Template quality ratings, template pausing and per-user marketing limits all exist to protect customers from irrelevant messages. A marketing message that is not delivered "to maintain healthy ecosystem engagement" (error code 131049) is usually a frequency or relevance signal, not a technical fault.

Free entry point windows. If a customer reaches you through a Click to WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page call-to-action button and you reply within 24 hours, Meta opens a 72-hour window in which you can send any message type to that customer at no delivery charge. This is the one place where marketing templates can be free to send.

Which interactive messages should you use, and when?

Interactive messages are free-form messages that carry something the customer can tap. They are non-template messages, which means you can send them only while the customer service window is open. Outside the window, the equivalent tools are templates with buttons, carousel templates and catalog templates.

Reply buttons

Reply buttons offer a short set of choices that come back to you as a structured value. Use them when there are two or three obvious answers: "Yes, confirm", "Reschedule", "Talk to a person". They are the cheapest way to cut typing, and they make your automation more reliable than keyword matching because the reply is an ID you defined, not whatever the customer typed.

List messages

A list message opens a menu of options grouped into sections. Use it when a customer has to pick from more than a handful of choices, such as a department, a service type or an order from their history. The main failure is length: a list that tries to cover everything becomes the chat version of a bad phone menu. Keep the first level to the questions your team actually receives most often.

Call-to-action URL buttons

A URL button opens a web page in the customer's browser. It is the standard route for things WhatsApp cannot do natively in your market: a payment page, a long form, a tracking portal. Because the customer leaves the chat, treat it as a handoff and make sure the page is mobile-first and returns them to the conversation gracefully.

Media carousels

An interactive media carousel shows a row of swipeable cards. According to Meta's specification, a carousel must have between 2 and 10 cards; the main message body is required (up to 1,024 characters); each card needs an image or video header; card body text is optional and capped at 160 characters; and each card carries either one URL button or one or more quick-reply buttons. Button labels are limited to 20 characters, and the button type and count must match across every card. These constraints matter in practice: a catalogue where some products have a "Buy now" link and others have two reply buttons cannot be a single carousel.

Carousels work best for browsing decisions with a visual component: three apartment layouts, four plan tiers with a picture each, five seasonal products. They work poorly for text-heavy comparisons, which are better as a table sent as an image or a Flow.

Location and address requests

Location request messages ask the customer to share their location with a tap, and address messages collect a delivery address in a structured format. For delivery, home service and store-locator use cases, these remove the most error-prone part of the conversation: a customer typing a half-remembered address into a chat box.

Catalog, single-product and multi-product messages

If you maintain a catalog, you can send a single product, a group of products or a product carousel inside the window, and use catalog and product templates outside it. The advantage over a photo and a price in plain text is that the item is a real object: the customer can add it to a cart and return it to you as a structured order, which your system can read without a human re-keying it.

Call buttons and deep links

Call button messages and deep links let you offer a voice call from within the chat. They connect to the Calling API, covered later in this guide.

What do interactive messages not do?

They do not remove the window rule. They do not carry unlimited text: each format has its own length caps, and Meta can change them. And they depend on the customer's app version, so any critical journey needs a plain-text fallback ("Reply 1 to confirm") if you serve customers on older devices.

What are WhatsApp Flows, and when do they beat a normal chat?

WhatsApp Flows let you present a structured, multi-field experience inside WhatsApp, such as a form with text fields, dropdowns, date pickers and confirmation screens, so the customer completes a task in one guided interaction instead of a long back-and-forth. Meta describes them as a way to build structured interactions without sending the customer to an external site or app.

When is a Flow better than a chat?

Choose a Flow when you need several pieces of data in a fixed order and the cost of a wrong or missing answer is high. If you would otherwise ask five questions in a row, you are paying for five messages, waiting for five replies, and parsing five free-text answers. A Flow gathers the same data in one screen sequence and returns it to you as one structured payload.

Choose plain interactive messages instead when you need one choice, when the question depends heavily on the customer's last answer in ways that are hard to script, or when a conversation with a human is the goal.

Original examples of Flow use

These are illustrative scenarios rather than client results.

• A dental clinic booking flow. Screen one asks for the treatment type, screen two shows available dates from the clinic's scheduling system, screen three collects the patient's name and a contact preference. A confirmation template goes out afterwards, and a reminder template the day before. The Flow replaces a ten-message exchange with a front-desk assistant.

• A regional insurer's quote request. The customer enters age band, vehicle type and city on two screens. The Flow submits to your endpoint, which returns an indicative range and offers a call-back slot. Meta's own getting-started examples for Flows include a pre-approved loan or credit card flow, an insurance quote, a personalised offer and a purchase interest form, which shows the intended territory: lead capture and qualification.

• A home-appliance service request. The customer picks the product, describes the fault from a dropdown, uploads a photo, and chooses a visit window. The support team receives one clean ticket rather than a screenshot and a vague sentence.

• A post-delivery feedback form. Three screens: rating, reason, optional comment. Sent as a utility-style follow-up where Meta's category rules allow it.

How Flows are built and sent

You design a Flow in the Flow builder in WhatsApp Manager (under account tools) or manage it through the Flows API. A Flow can be static, or it can call an endpoint you host to fetch live data such as available appointment slots. For endpoint-based Flows, Meta requires encrypted requests and responses, which means you register a business public key (partner documentation specifies a 2048-bit RSA key) and implement decryption on your server.

You can send a Flow inside the customer service window as an interactive message, or outside it by attaching the Flow to a template message. Meta also provides Flow health and monitoring tools and a metrics API so you can see where customers drop off.

What limits Flows?

• Eligibility. Partner documentation lists a verified business and good message quality as prerequisites to send Flows. Check with your provider whether your account qualifies.

• Device support. Not every device or app version supports Flows. Test on older Android devices and build a fallback path.

• Template review. A template that carries a Flow still goes through approval, and it is billed in the category Meta assigns.

• Scope. A Flow is a form, not a full application. If your process needs complex branching, document uploads, or authentication, a URL button to a web page may serve better.

Can customers pay inside WhatsApp?

Sometimes. This is the claim that has aged worst. Older articles, including our earlier version of this one, presented in-app payments and checkout as a general feature of the API. In 2026 the accurate statement is that Meta documents native payment experiences for three markets: India, Brazil and Mexico. Elsewhere, you use a payment link on a URL button, or send the customer to your checkout.

India

Meta's India payments guide describes two integration models. In UPI intent mode, you can use any payment gateway that supports UPI intent generation, and customers can pay through the UPI apps installed on their phone. In payment gateway deep integration mode, supported today for Razorpay, PayU, Billdesk and Zaakpay, the experience also supports other methods such as cards, net banking and wallets natively, plus payment status notifications through WhatsApp webhooks and refunds from WhatsApp's APIs. UPI intent mode does not support refunds or payment status through WhatsApp webhooks, so you rely on the gateway for those, and you can send payment links to cover other payment methods.

Use cases where this fits include ticketing, bill payments and subscription or insurance renewals, where the flow is: order details message or template, payment, payment status, order status message.

Brazil and Mexico

Meta maintains separate payment guides for Brazil (covering orders, Pix, payment links, boleto and one-click payments, with order details and payment request templates) and Mexico (orders, payment links, payment account and cash voucher flows). If you sell in either market, ask your provider which of these they support, because the integration depends on gateway partners and not only on Meta.

Everywhere else

Use a CTA URL button to a hosted payment page, or send a payment link inside an order confirmation. The engagement gain here comes from the surrounding messages, not from native payment: a clear order summary, a single-tap path to pay, and an automatic confirmation the moment payment clears.

Can I use AI chatbots and smart replies?

Yes, with more nuance than 2025 articles suggested. There are now three different things people mean by "AI on WhatsApp", and they are treated differently.

Your own bot or a third-party AI solution that answers your customers on your behalf. Meta classes these replies as ordinary non-template messages: service messages. Under Meta's documentation, a person or a third-party AI agent can send them. You pay Meta for message delivery, and separately pay your AI provider for the AI usage.

Meta Business Agent, Meta's own AI agent platform for businesses. Meta says it launched the platform on 1 July 2026 and that partners or directly integrated clients can integrate it by API. From 1 August 2026, Meta charges for these messages on a per-token basis, at a single global rate of US$2.00 per million tokens, as one charge that covers both AI processing and delivery. Meta's examples suggest one message typically uses roughly 20,000 to 25,000 tokens, which works out to about four to five US cents. Cost varies with complexity: a simple opening-hours question costs less than a multi-step troubleshooting conversation.

General-purpose AI assistants offered by AI providers. Under updated WhatsApp Business Solution Terms effective 15 January 2026, providers of large language models or general-purpose assistants are only permitted to offer those assistants on the Business Platform where Meta is legally required to allow it. Meta has charged AI providers separately for non-template messages in certain markets. Brazil (country code +55) has been subject to that charging since 11 March 2026. A set of European markets was charged from 11 March until 12 May 2026, and Meta stopped charging in those markets from 13 May 2026. Meta's pricing documentation states that this policy does not change how it charges other businesses.

For most businesses, the practical reading is: a support or sales assistant that answers questions about your own products and processes is an ordinary business use of the API. A general chatbot that answers any question on any topic is a different category with its own rules. If you are unsure which one you are building, read the current Business Solution Terms and ask your provider.

How should AI-assisted engagement be designed?

• Tell customers who they are talking to. Say that it is an automated assistant, early.

• Give a visible way out. A "Talk to a person" reply button on every AI turn is the simplest control you have.

• Hand off with context. Pass the conversation, the customer's stated intent and any collected data to the human agent. Customers who have to repeat themselves disengage fast.

• Work out the cost per resolved conversation, not per message. Meta's own comparison for 10,000 AI-powered messages to users in Brazil estimates roughly US$268 for a lower-complexity third-party AI setup, roughly US$968 for a higher-complexity one, and roughly US$400 to US$500 for Meta Business Agent. Those are Meta's illustrative figures based on public benchmarks, not guarantees. They show that the cheaper option depends on how complex your conversations are.

• Log the pricing category in your webhooks. Service and Meta Business Agent messages use different category values, so you can see which AI path is costing what.

Can customers call your business on WhatsApp?

Yes. The WhatsApp Business Calling API lets you receive and place voice calls over the internet, from the same verified number you use for messaging. Calls to your business from customers are free for the customer. In engagement terms, it lets you keep chat as the default and offer voice for the moments that need it, while keeping a single thread as the record.

What you need

• A number running on the Cloud API, not the Business app.

• A messaging limit of at least 2,000 unique recipients per day.

• Calling enabled in your phone number's call settings, plus your app subscribed to the calls webhook field (unless you use SIP).

• For business-initiated calls, a valid payment method and a business number from a supported country.

How permission works

For business-initiated calls, the customer must grant permission. You request it with a call permission request message or template. Meta limits those requests per business-and-customer pair to one per day and two per week for production accounts. If your calls go unanswered, Meta sends a system message after two consecutive unanswered calls telling you to reconsider, and automatically revokes permission after four. Meta introduced calling restrictions based on low pickup rates in September 2025 and on user feedback in January 2026, so repeated unwanted calls can cost you the feature.

Cost and availability

User-initiated calls are free. Business-initiated calls are charged by duration in six-second pulses, with rates that depend on the country you are calling and on a monthly volume tier. Business-initiated calling is not available when your business number is in the United States, Canada, Egypt, Vietnam or Nigeria, while user-initiated calling is available wherever the Cloud API is.

The documentation I reviewed marks video calling and screen sharing as planned or in development, so do not build commitments around them until your provider confirms they are live for your account.

Where calling fits

Calling suits high-value, high-complexity situations: a lender discussing repayment options, an insurer handling a claim, a clinic confirming a procedure, a travel company resolving a rebooking. Calling settings include business calling hours and callback requests, so customers who call out of hours can be steered back to chat or offered a callback instead of hitting silence.

What marketing features exist, and how do they differ from general messaging?

Marketing features cover outbound messages designed to promote, upsell or re-engage. This section lists capabilities; it does not tell you how to build a growth programme. For that, see our guide to growing a business with the WhatsApp Business API in 2026.

Template formats. Marketing templates support media headers, carousel templates (swipeable cards in a template), coupon code templates, limited-time-offer templates, location templates, catalog and product templates, and call permission request templates. These formats exist because a plain text message with a link competes poorly with a visual card the customer can act on in one tap.

The Marketing Messages API for WhatsApp. This is a separate API path for marketing messages that adds features not found in the standard Cloud API: benchmarks comparing your read and click rates with similar templates from other businesses in your region, data-derived recommendations, GIF headers, Android app deep links, custom time-to-live (from 12 hours to 30 days, so a flash offer expires rather than arriving late), conversion measurement for web and app events, and automated creative optimisations (in pilot). Meta also describes quality-based delivery, which gives priority to messages that customers are likely to find relevant. Meta reports that in an A/B test of about 12 million delivered marketing messages from advertisers in India in January 2025, optimised delivery produced up to 9% more deliveries of high-engagement messages than standard delivery. That result is from a single market and a single month, so treat it as directional.

A maximum price per marketing message. From 2026, businesses on the Marketing Messages API can set a maximum price for marketing delivery. If you set one, Meta charges that price or lower.

Click to WhatsApp ads and welcome sequences. Ads that start a WhatsApp conversation can be paired with welcome message sequences, and the free entry point window described earlier removes delivery charges for 72 hours after you reply.

Frequency controls. Per-user marketing template limits apply regardless of your messaging limit. A large messaging limit does not give you the right to send a single customer many promotions.

What is changing with usernames and business-scoped user IDs?

This is the least visible change and arguably the one most likely to break an existing engagement setup.

WhatsApp is introducing optional usernames for users, and businesses can claim usernames too. To make this work, Meta began sharing a new identifier in webhooks in April 2026: the business-scoped user ID, or BSUID. A BSUID uniquely identifies a customer within your business portfolio. It looks like a country code, a period and a long alphanumeric string, and Meta requires all partners and directly integrated businesses (and Click to WhatsApp advertisers) to support it.

The reason it matters for engagement: if a customer adopts a username, their phone number may not appear in your webhooks. Meta says phone numbers will still be included if you messaged or called that number in the last 30 days, received a message or call from it in the last 30 days, or have the user in your contact book (a Meta-hosted feature). Outside those cases, your system receives only the BSUID. A CRM that keys customers by phone number will start to lose them.

Practical consequences:

• Update your customer record to store BSUIDs alongside phone numbers, and handle the webhook that reports when a BSUID changes after a customer changes their phone number.

• Know the exceptions. One-tap, zero-tap and copy-code authentication templates require the user's phone number and cannot be sent to a BSUID.

• Use the contact request button (available from July 2026 in templates and interactive messages) if you need a customer's phone number and they have chosen privacy.

• Understand display rules. In the chat window, Meta shows a saved contact name first, then your verified business name or Official Business Account name, then a username, then a phone number. Adopting a business username does not hide your business phone number, and Meta says business usernames are not intended as a privacy feature.

• Check eligibility. Claiming a business username requires a higher messaging limit, and Meta notes that these details are subject to change while the rollout continues.

Which feature should do which business job? A matrix

Use this table to match a customer-facing job to the feature that fits, what Meta categorises it as, and what to watch for.

What does each feature cost, and what changed on 1 October 2026?

Cost is a feature constraint, so it belongs in a feature guide. This section is deliberately brief. It tells you how to classify a feature's charges, not what your rate is. For rates, use Meta's published rate cards for your market and currency.

Meta has charged per delivered template message since 1 July 2025. Charges depend on the template's category and the recipient's country calling code. As of 1 October 2026, three more things are billed.

The 1,000 free service messages apply per business phone number, reset monthly and do not roll over. Meta's pricing documentation describes only two ways around billing on service messages: use the free tier or reply inside a free entry point window.

A worked example

An illustrative scenario: a single support number sends 2,600 free-form replies in October, including buttons and Flow messages, plus 400 order-confirmation utility templates inside open windows. The first 1,000 service replies are free. That leaves 1,600 billable service messages and 400 billable in-window utility messages: 2,000 billable messages in total, all at the market's utility rate. Before October, the same activity cost nothing. If the same volume were spread across two business phone numbers, each number would get its own free 1,000, which could reduce the billable count. That is a reason to review number architecture, not a reason to split numbers just to save money, since quality, branding and customer experience matter more.

Billing also depends on having a payment method. A provider article citing Meta's pricing documentation reports that without a payment method on file, service messages still deliver within the free tier but stop delivering once it is used. Confirm with your provider that billing is set up before October volume surprises you.

If you are in India or Brazil, check your billing currency migration deadlines as well.

What has changed since 2025? Stale claims and their replacements

If you are comparing this page to older material, use this table to spot what no longer holds.

How do you decide which feature to launch first?

Use this decision table to choose a starting point. It assumes you already have a working, verified account.

A pre-launch checklist

Work through this before turning on any feature. It is short on purpose.

1. Account basics. Is the number on the Cloud API? Is the business verified? Is the display name approved? Do you know your current messaging limit and quality rating?

2. Opt-in evidence. Can you show when and how each customer agreed to hear from you?

3. Template hygiene. Have you checked the category Meta assigned to each approved template? Is any template paused or low quality?

4. Billing readiness. Is there a payment method on the account? Have you estimated October and November service message volume per number? Do you know your billing currency and any migration deadline?

5. Identity handling. Does your CRM store the BSUID? Does it handle BSUID changes? Do you know which flows (such as one-tap login) still need phone numbers?

6. Fallbacks. Does every interactive message or Flow have a plain-text fallback? Have you tested on older devices?

7. Human handoff. Is there a visible path from every automated step to a person, with context passed along?

8. Webhook logging. Do you log the pricing category on delivered messages, so you can reconcile cost by feature?

9. Calling readiness (if used). Does your messaging limit reach 2,000? Is your business number in a supported country for outbound calls? Do you have a process for permission requests and unanswered calls?

10. Review date. Have you put a calendar reminder to re-check Meta's pricing and availability pages at the start of each quarter?

Frequently asked questions

Is the WhatsApp Business API different from the WhatsApp Business app?

Yes. The Business app is a mobile app for small businesses. The Business API (Cloud API) is a programmable platform accessed through a provider or direct integration, with templates, webhooks, higher volume and features such as Flows and calling. Meta documents a coexistence onboarding path for businesses that want to keep using the Business app alongside the API on the same number, but some features, such as the Calling API, require the number to be in use with the Cloud API.

Can I send interactive messages to customers who have not messaged me first?

Not as free-form messages. Interactive messages are non-template messages that need an open customer service window. To reach a customer outside it, use an approved template, which can carry buttons, a carousel, a catalog or a Flow.

Do Flows work for every customer?

Not necessarily. Flows depend on the customer's WhatsApp version and device, and on your account meeting Meta's requirements. Build a fallback path in plain text or a URL button, and test on older devices before launch.

Can I run an AI chatbot on WhatsApp?

Yes for a support or sales assistant that serves your own customers. Third-party AI replies are billed as service messages, and you pay your AI provider separately. Meta Business Agent is billed per token. General-purpose assistants from AI providers are subject to separate terms effective 15 January 2026. Read the current Business Solution Terms for your case.

What happens to my engagement features if customers start using usernames?

Features continue to work, but your system must handle business-scoped user IDs, because a customer's phone number may not appear in webhooks. Authentication templates that autofill or copy codes still need the phone number, so plan how to collect it, for example with the contact request button.

Sources and dates

These are the primary sources used for this guide. Meta changes documentation often, so treat the dates as a snapshot and re-check before you build.

• Meta, Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform (rate cards effective 1 July 2026; October 2026 rate-card notes; per-message model; free entry point windows; billing localisation; Marketing Messages API max price): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/pricing

• Meta, Pricing for non-template messages (Meta Business Agent per-token pricing from 1 August 2026; service message and in-window utility billing from 1 October 2026): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/pricing/non-template-messages

• Meta, New pricing policy for AI Providers (Business Solution Terms update of 15 January 2026; market list updated 12 May 2026): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/pricing/ai-providers

• Meta, Messaging limits (portfolio-level limits, scaling paths, automatic scaling): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/messaging-limits

• Meta, Cloud API Calling and Calling API pricing (availability, prerequisites, permission limits, per-pulse pricing): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/calling and https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/calling/pricing

• Meta, Payments API, India (UPI intent and payment gateway integration modes): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/payments/payments-in/overview

• Meta, Interactive media carousel messages (card counts, character limits): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/messages/interactive-media-carousel-messages

• Meta, Marketing Messages API for WhatsApp: Features (benchmarks, TTL, quality-based delivery, India A/B test footnote): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/marketing-messages/features

• Meta, Business-scoped user IDs (BSUID, usernames, contact book, request contact info button): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/business-scoped-user-ids

• Meta, WhatsApp Business Cloud API documentation index (listing of Flows, catalogs, payments, calling and template sections): https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/llms.txt

  
  

Pricing, availability and policy can change on the first day of each quarter. Always confirm current rates and eligibility in WhatsApp Manager or with your provider before committing budget.

Next step

If you are working out which of these features fits your business and how to roll it out on a verified account, our WhatsApp Business API service page explains how we help with onboarding and support. For the full picture of how the platform works end to end, start with our comprehensive guide to the WhatsApp Business API. To measure whether these features are working, see our engagement metrics guide; to map them into a full customer journey, see our journey design guide.