WhatsApp API and ecommerce glossary

Meta’s platform for businesses that message customers at scale through software. It includes the Cloud API for sending and receiving messages, the Business Management API for managing accounts and templates, the Marketing Messages API and webhooks.

Read more: The official WhatsApp API in Whapi

The common name for the WhatsApp Business Platform’s messaging API. Meta’s older On-Premises API stopped sending messages after October 23, 2025, so today it means the WhatsApp Cloud API. A Shopify app such as Whapi connects a store’s own number to it to send automated messages.

Read more: Official WhatsApp API

The version of the WhatsApp Business API that Meta hosts. Software sends text, media and interactive messages through it, and receives customer messages and delivery statuses as webhooks.

Meta’s free-to-download app for small businesses to chat with customers one by one from a phone. It doesn’t send messages automatically when something happens in a store, such as a new order. For that, a business connects its number to the WhatsApp Business API, and coexistence lets it keep using the app.

Running one business phone number on the WhatsApp Business App and the WhatsApp Cloud API at the same time. You keep chatting from the app on your phone while an API provider sends automated messages from the same number, and WhatsApp keeps the message history in sync. Up to 6 months of one-to-one chats can sync when you connect; group chats are not synced.

Read more: WhatsApp coexistence explained

The Meta business account that owns a company’s WhatsApp accounts, Messaging accounts and other Meta assets. WhatsApp messaging limits are set at the business portfolio level and shared by every phone number in it.

Meta’s container for a business’s WhatsApp phone numbers, templates and billing. Meta is splitting it into a WhatsApp account (WAAC) for the phone number, and a Messaging account for templates, billing and webhooks. The new model became generally available on September 23, 2026 and reaches all businesses by mid-October 2026. Existing WABA IDs carry on as Messaging account IDs.

Under Meta’s new account model, the account that holds one business phone number and represents the business on WhatsApp. The business always owns it and can share it with more than one partner.

Under Meta’s new account model, the account that holds a business’s message templates, billing details and webhook subscriptions. Each partner a business works with has its own Messaging account, so billing stays separate.

The business name shown in the WhatsApp profile of a WhatsApp Business Platform number. You provide it when you register the number, and Meta checks it against its display name guidelines in an automatic verification.

Meta’s check that a business portfolio belongs to a real, registered business. It is one way to raise a WhatsApp messaging limit from 250 to 2,000. Unverified portfolios are also limited to 250 message templates per Messaging account.

Read more: How Meta business verification works

A common name for companies that provide WhatsApp Business Platform services to other businesses. Meta’s documentation calls them partners: Solution Partners, which can extend credit lines and invoice clients for WhatsApp usage, plus Tech Providers and Tech Partners, whose clients pay Meta directly.

A company that offers WhatsApp Business Platform services through its own app without a Meta credit line. Its clients add their own payment method after onboarding, Meta bills them for WhatsApp messages, and the Tech Provider bills only for its own service.

Meta’s sign-up window that an app opens so a business can log in, accept Meta’s terms, choose or create its WhatsApp assets and give the app access. It can also connect a number already on the WhatsApp Business App, which is how coexistence starts.

Read more: Whapi setup guide

An automatic message one system sends to another when something happens. Meta delivers every incoming WhatsApp message and every delivery status to a business’s app by webhook, and Shopify can notify apps the same way about events such as new orders.

A message format with fixed text and variables that Meta has approved. A business can only start a conversation, or message a customer outside the 24-hour customer service window, with a template.

Read more: WhatsApp message templates for Shopify

The type Meta assigns to every template: Marketing, Utility or Authentication. The category sets the price of each message, and Meta decides it. Since April 9, 2025, a template submitted as Utility is approved as Marketing if its content is marketing.

Read more: Utility vs marketing templates

A template about the customer’s own order, account or request, such as an order confirmation, shipping update or payment reminder, with no promotional content. On Meta’s rate card effective October 1, 2026, Utility costs less than Marketing in every market, for example $0.0550 vs $0.1365 per message in Germany and $0.0220 vs $0.0635 in the United Kingdom.

Read more: WhatsApp message templates

A template that promotes products, offers or the business, or mixes promotion into an otherwise transactional message. Sale announcements, coupons and abandoned cart reminders are Marketing under Meta’s guidelines. It is the most expensive category, and WhatsApp limits how many marketing messages each person receives.

Read more: Marketing templates

A template that sends a one-time passcode so a customer can verify their identity or log in. On Meta’s current rate card it costs the same as Utility in every market.

A free-form reply, not a template, sent while the customer service window is open. Since October 1, 2026, Meta charges for them per delivered message, but each business phone number gets 1,000 free per month. On the current rate card the Service rate equals the Utility rate.

A placeholder in a template that is filled in for each message, such as the customer’s name or order number. Meta supports numbered variables like {{1}} and named ones like {{first_name}}. In Whapi you insert Shopify data with variables such as {{customer_first_name}} and {{order_number}}.

The parts of a template: an optional header (text of up to 60 characters, or media such as an image, video or document), a required body of up to 1,024 characters, an optional footer of up to 60 characters, and up to 10 buttons.

A template button the customer taps to send a preset answer. Labels can be up to 25 characters, and a template can have up to 10. Order confirmation messages usually use two, such as Confirm Order and Cancel Order.

Read more: Order confirmation on WhatsApp

Meta’s check of every new or edited template, by automated systems and people, before it can be sent. A decision can take up to 24 hours, and a rejected template can be edited and submitted again.

Read more: Why WhatsApp templates get rejected

A customer’s permission to receive WhatsApp messages from a business. Meta requires it before a business messages someone: the person must have given their phone number and agreed to receive messages from that named business. It can be collected on a website, by SMS, by phone or on paper.

Read more: Collect WhatsApp opt-ins on Shopify

The General Data Protection Regulation, the EU law on personal data; the UK has its own version. For WhatsApp, it shapes how a store collects and records opt-in to marketing messages, honors opt-outs and answers requests to access or delete personal data.

Read more: How Whapi handles GDPR for WhatsApp

The 24 hours after a customer’s last message or call to a business. While it is open, the business can send free-form messages; once it closes, only templates. Each new message or call from the customer resets it to 24 hours.

Read more: Error 131047: outside the 24-hour window

Meta’s WhatsApp pricing model since July 1, 2025. Meta charges for each delivered message a business sends, based on its category and the country code of the customer’s number, instead of per 24-hour conversation. Messages customers send to a business are free.

Read more: WhatsApp API pricing by country

Meta’s published table of WhatsApp message rates by country and region. Meta may change it only on January 1, April 1, July 1 or October 1, with at least a month’s notice. The current card took effect on October 1, 2026.

A window of up to 7 days that opens when a customer messages a business from a Click to WhatsApp ad on the WhatsApp Android or iOS app and the business replies within the customer service window. While it is open, Meta doesn’t charge for Marketing, Utility, Authentication or Service messages to that customer.

A Facebook or Instagram ad whose button opens a WhatsApp chat with the business. Replying in time to a chat that starts from one opens a free entry point window.

Lower Utility and Authentication rates that apply as a business’s monthly volume in a market grows. Meta counts charged messages across the business portfolio and resets the count each month. On the October 1, 2026 USD card, the lowest tier is 25% below the list rate. Marketing and Service messages have no tiers.

A higher rate for Authentication templates in some markets, including Ukraine, Indonesia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It applies only to businesses Meta has deemed eligible, sending to customers in a different country from the business.

The most unique customers a business can message outside the customer service window in a moving 24-hour period. It is set per business portfolio and shared by all its numbers. New portfolios start at 250. It rises to 2,000 when you verify your business or deliver 2,000 high-quality template messages to unique customers within 30 days, then automatically to 10,000, 100,000 and unlimited.

Read more: Messaging limits and quality

Meta’s rating of a template based on usage, customer feedback and engagement: High (green), Medium (yellow), Low (red), or Quality pending for new templates. Separately, Meta rates a business’s overall message quality from how customers received its messages over the past 7 days, using signals such as blocks, reports, mutes and archives.

Meta automatically pauses a template that reaches Low quality: for 3 hours the first time, 6 hours the second time, and it is disabled the third time. A paused template can’t be sent.

WhatsApp’s cap on how many marketing messages one person receives from all businesses when they are less likely to engage. Messages held back by it fail with error 131049, and Meta doesn’t charge for undelivered messages.

Read more: Fix error 131049

A Shopify checkout a customer started but didn’t pay for. Shopify counts it as abandoned once it stays incomplete for more than 10 minutes after the customer entered their email. Stores send reminders with a link back to the checkout.

Read more: WhatsApp abandoned cart recovery

A message that asks the customer to confirm an order before it ships, by phone call, SMS or WhatsApp. With Whapi, the customer taps Confirm or Cancel in a WhatsApp message and the answer is added to the Shopify order as a tag.

Read more: WhatsApp order confirmation

In Shopify, getting an order to the customer: picking, packing and shipping it, then marking it as fulfilled. Adding the courier’s tracking number to the fulfillment stores the tracking details that WhatsApp shipping updates use.

Read more: WhatsApp shipping updates

The code a courier gives a parcel so it can be followed. When you add it to a Shopify order, Whapi can send it to the customer on WhatsApp with the tracking link.

Read more: Shipping update templates

Labels you add to Shopify orders to group, search and filter them, for example Confirmed or Cancelled. You can filter the Orders page by tag, which is how teams find the confirmed orders that are ready to ship.

The highest level of recognition an app can reach on the Shopify App Store. Apps must meet Shopify’s standards for safety, security and reliability, performance, ease of use, proven usefulness and app information, and they get a badge and extra promotion in the App Store. Whapi has Built for Shopify status.

Read more: Whapi and Built for Shopify

Paying in cash to the courier when the parcel arrives. In Shopify, cash on delivery is a manual payment method: these orders stay unpaid until you mark them as paid, and Shopify charges no third-party transaction fees on manual payments. Some stores collect the delivery fee upfront and the rest at the door, which is called partial COD.

A parcel the courier sends back to the seller because it couldn’t be delivered or the customer refused it. The store usually pays for shipping both ways, sometimes a return fee too, and loses the sale.