Display name guidelines
When you add a new phone number to your WhatsApp business account, you must assign it a display name.
All display names must have a relationship with your business and must not violate WhatsApp's Commerce and Business policies. Having display names compliant with the WhatsApp guidelines is required to send messages through the WhatsApp Business API and to qualify for a WhatsApp official business account.
Before completing registration, you may change the display name as many times as you wish. After registration, you must wait 30 days between display name change requests.
Below are the principles that apply to display names:
Compliance with policies
A display name must not violate WhatsApp's Commerce and Business policies. Here is an example for a store that sells wine glasses:
- Accepted: ABC Wine Glasses
- Not accepted: ABC Wine
Within your company, you may have separate WhatsApp business accounts for each division; but only the divisions that comply with WhatsApp's Commerce Policy may have a WhatsApp business account.
Accurate representation of your business
A display name must represent:
- A business, or one of its services, products, or departments
- A test or demo account, which must maintain an association with the business (for example, Fresh Produce Test)
A display name must not be:
- An individual's full name
- A generic term (for example, Fashion)
- A generic geographic location (for example, New York)
- A slogan or a long description
Organizations with a government affiliation need approval from the WhatsApp team. A display name must contain at least 3 characters.
Consistency with external branding
A display name must be consistent with the branding used in external sources (for example, the company's website or marketing material). Here is an example for a product line named “Fresh Produce Cold Pressed Juices”:
- Accepted: Fresh Produce Cold Pressed Juices (how the brand appears on your website)
- Not accepted: Fresh Produce Juices (you changed the branding by removing “Cold Pressed”)
- Not accepted: FP Cold Pressed Juices (you added an abbreviation to the company name that does not match the external branding)
A display name must use grammatically correct capitalization, matching the capitalization of your external branding. Do not change the spacing and do not add extra punctuation, emojis, or symbols.
Clear relationship with your business
A display name must have a clear relationship with your business (it must appear on the company's website or in external media references). For example:
- Accepted: name of a charity mentioned on a non-profit organization's website
- Not accepted: name of a charity that is not mentioned on any external website
If the relationship between your company and the brand is not obvious, indicate that relationship using “by [company name]”.
- Not accepted: Fruit Snacks (Fresh Produce owns the Fruit Snacks brand, but that association is not mentioned on any external website)
- Accepted: Fruit Snacks by Fresh Produce
If the display name represents a business that your company works with (that is, if it is an agency, distributor, partner, or parent company), the relationship between the business represented in the display name and the end-client business must be evident and clear on both parties' business websites. For example: if Global Voyager signs up for WhatsApp and wants to use the display name Commercial Air, it must submit links to both websites stating that Commercial Air is a subsidiary of Global Voyager.
Legal entity in the footer
If the company's official name (legal entity) in the documents used for Business Verification is different from the name used on the website, we recommend mentioning the legal entity on the website — for example, in the footer: "Business ABC powered by business CDE"
Working website
A display name cannot be approved without a working website. The website must be verified in your Facebook Business Manager. If your company's website changes, the new address must be submitted for verification.