Most WhatsApp customers arrive with a phone number. Some arrive with a business-scoped identifier instead — an id that identifies them to your business only, with no phone number attached. WhatsApp does this when the customer reaches you through certain entry points, and it is normal rather than broken.
You can hold the whole conversation with such a contact. What you cannot do is anything that needs the number itself.
The two refusals you will meet
Authentication templates require a phone number. A one-time-passcode template is refused for a business-scoped contact, because the passcode's whole purpose is to prove control of a number that is not there. There is no workaround, and this is the right outcome: delivering a passcode to an identifier you cannot verify would be worse than refusing.
The template's category could not be verified. Sending to a business-scoped contact requires knowing which category the template is, and the category is read from the inbox's synced template list. If the template is not in that list under that name and language, Lynomia Chat refuses rather than guess — a wrong guess here could send an authentication template to a contact that must not receive one.
Clearing the second one is straightforward: open Settings → Templates, press Sync templates, and confirm the template appears with the name and language you are sending. See WhatsApp templates.
Getting a phone number
You can ask for one — WhatsApp puts the request to the customer and they decide. The conditions are in a contact information request was refused.
Once a number is shared, the contact becomes an ordinary contact and these two refusals stop applying.
Who can do this
Any agent can send and will see the refusals. Syncing templates and getting a template approved are administrator work.
Limits
- You cannot convert a business-scoped contact yourself. Only the customer sharing their number does that.
- Authentication templates stay refused for as long as there is no number. This is deliberate.
- Merging such a contact with one that has a phone number does not retrospectively make earlier messages sendable.
- The identifier is scoped to your business. It is not a WhatsApp account id you can use anywhere else.