Send a WhatsApp message

Please note that free form text messages can only be sent when a customer sends a message to the business first. The business has up to 24 hours from the last moment the customer messages to send a free form message back. After that period a WhatsApp Template (MTM) needs to be used.

If you have not received a message from the customer you will need to send a WhatsApp Template (MTM) before sending a message. You can learn more about this in Understanding WhatsApp Messaging.

If you want to see the code for sending a WhatsApp Template you can view the Sending a WhatsApp Template code snippet.

Key Description
WHATSAPP_NUMBER Your WhatsApp number.
TO_NUMBER The phone number you are sending the message to.

NOTE: Don't use a leading + or 00 when entering a phone number, start with the country code, for example 447700900000.

Example

Write the code

Add the following to send-text.sh:

View full source

Run your code

Save this file to your machine and run it:

bash send-text.sh

TIP: If testing using Curl you will need a JWT. You can see how to create one in the documentation on creating a JWT.

Sending a WhatsApp message

The Messages API provides the ability to send messages to various channels, including Facebook Messenger, SMS, WhatsApp and Viber. This tutorial describes using the Messages API to send a WhatsApp message.

Steps
1
Introduction to this tutorial
2
Prerequisites
3
Send a WhatsApp message
4
What's next?