WhatsApp Business Platform

On-Behalf-Of account ownership model deprecation

We're deprecating the On-Behalf-Of ("OBO") account ownership model and replacing it with partner-initiated WABA creation. Partner-initiated creation has several advantages:

  • It gives business customers the opportunity to review their account information and data access settings before their account is created.
  • It gives business customers direct ownership of their account, which means they can use WhatsApp Manager to perform common actions like creating templates, viewing analytics, and adding business phone numbers.
  • It gives business customers access to future features, such as Marketing Messages Lite API, which will only be available to accounts that use the new model.

Partner-initiated WABA creation will be available to all Solution Partners on March 24, 2025. We recommend that you begin using the partner-initiated process instead of OBO right away, as you will no longer be able to onboard customers to the OBO model starting September 30, 2025, and all existing WABAs created under the OBO model must be transferred to business customers by October 1, 2025.

Deprecation timeline

  • March 24, 2025: partner-initiated WABA creation is made available to all Solution Providers.
  • September 29, 2025: last day to onboard business customers to the OBO model.
  • October 1, 2025: last day to transfer ownership of OBO model WABAs to business customers.

Payment methods

Partner-initiated WABA creation does not support automatic payment setup. Instead, you must share your credit line with the business customer via the API. See Partner-initiated WABA creation for details.

Multi-Partner Solutions

Business customers cannot be onboarded to a Multi-Partner Solution as part of the partner-initiated WABA creation process, but can be added to an MPS afterwards. See Partner-initiated WABA creation for details.

Marketing Messages Lite API

Existing OBO model WABAs need to be transferred to business customers if you want to use them with the Marketing Messages Lite API, but this can be done as part of the MM Lite API onboarding process.