What you need to create a WhatsApp connection via Clickatell (for AMs)

Clickatell will:

• Provide a single API that can be used for both SMS and WhatsApp (this is good because we won’t need to route the messages through different APIs if a client is using both).
• provide reach in all countries.
• Provide security feature that can either be shared or dedicated
• Provide inbound and outbound messages priced differently. Unstructured messages are basically two-way messages. These cost abit more.

 https://www.clickatell.com/products/whatsapp/ 

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing

FrontlineSMS will:

• Inform client of the requirement of a working number in-country. This number should not have been activated before on WhatsApp for business. If it’s a personal account can work around that. This becomes the official number that the client uses.
• There’s a document that needs to be executed between Clickatell and the client. This is a WhatsApp requirement. This is relevant to note in cases where the client is not aware that they are also ‘buying’ Clickatell.

Client needs to download the WhatsApp Business App and link it to the official business number which must be unique. You cannot use the same number on multiple business accounts.

There are Official Business Account (Whatsapp verified) and then simply Business Accounts. Unclear how to get verified. Official Business Account names are visible even if the user hasn’t added the number to their address book.

For Whatsapp + Twilio the idea is to get a Twilio number and use that to launch a Whatsapp business account.

When a user messages in to the business, the business has a 24 hour session where they can send any message they like to the user. 

Outside of the 24 hour window, whatsapp has a notification template system. The Business must add a template message to Whatsapp and then can trigger this message sent by identifying the template_id and the recipients. It’s unclear if there is an approval process for templates.

Organizations must get opt-in from users in order to send messages to the user outside of the 24 hours. I doubt there is a technical opt-in process, it’s just something that we’d need to manage and could do just like SMS.