Connect your WhatsApp number

Have these ready. Only an owner or an admin of the workspace can connect a number.

• A Facebook account you can sign in with. Meta uses it to know who is connecting the number; your customers never see it.
• The phone number, on a phone that can receive an SMS or a call for the code Meta sends. A landline works if it can take the call.
• Your business’s name as customers know it. Meta shows it to customers and checks that it matches your business.

Is the number on the WhatsApp Business app now? You can keep it there. In Meta’s window, choose to connect your existing WhatsApp Business app account: the app keeps working on your phone for one-to-one chats, and Sema works the same number beside it. See keeping the WhatsApp Business app.

1. Open Numbers and press Connect a number. Meta’s window opens over Sema. Keep the Sema tab open while you work in it.
2. Sign in to Facebook, and choose or create your business on Meta.
3. Create a WhatsApp Business account, or choose the one you have, and enter the display name and the phone number.
4. Type in the code Meta sends to the number.
5. Allow Sema the permissions Meta asks for, and finish. Sema shows Finishing setup… and then Connected.

Your plan sets how many numbers you can connect: Solo 1, Starter 1, Growth 3 and Scale 10.

The number has to be one your customers can write to, on a phone that can receive Meta’s code. With no spare line, the simplest answer is a new SIM: any Safaricom or Airtel line works. Keep it safe afterwards.

Meta also offers some businesses a free US number (+1 555) inside its window. If you see that option you can take it, but your customers see a US number, it can never be moved to another account or provider, and Meta has to approve its display name before it can send.

Would you rather not do it alone? On Numbers, or in the set-up guide, press Ask DataCare to help. Choose a call or a WhatsApp chat, and say where you are starting from: a number on the WhatsApp Business app, a new number, a number with another provider, or no Meta business account yet.

• On the call you go through Meta's window on your own screen while we talk you through it. Then we write your first answers and templates with you.
• Your business stays the owner of everything: the Meta business account, the WhatsApp account and the number. We never ask for your Facebook password.

Numbers says help is on its way until it is done. Connected it yourself in the meantime? Press I connected it myself.

Connect a number that is on the WhatsApp Business app, and choose to keep the app, and both work at once:

• You can go on chatting from the app on your phone. Whatever you send from it appears in Sema’s inbox too, marked Sent from the WhatsApp Business app, so the team sees the whole conversation. It is also free.
• Your contacts come across, by the names you gave them. Being in your phone’s address book is not consent to marketing, so none of them is counted as having agreed; and deleting someone from your phone does not delete them from Sema.
• If you allow it in Meta’s window, up to six months of past chats come across too, marked From before Sema and filed as resolved, so they do not flood the inbox. Group chats do not come across. Numbers shows how far the import has got.

Meta changes a few things in the app while the number is shared:

• disappearing messages, view-once and live location are switched off in chats;
• broadcast lists are switched off (use a campaign in Sema instead);
• the app must be version 2.24.17 or newer;
• Sema sends at 20 messages a second on the number, which is plenty for a shop.

To stop sharing, disconnect in the app (Settings, Account, Business Platform, Disconnect account). Sema shows the number as disconnected and tells owners and admins.

Meta charges for each WhatsApp message and bills the card on your WhatsApp Business account. Add one in Meta’s WhatsApp Manager, under Billing & payments, when you connect. Without a card, Meta stops your templates, and from 1 October 2026 your replies too.

No bank card? M-Pesa GlobalPay gives you a Visa card number that spends from your M-Pesa balance.

Sema shows each message’s full price before you send it, and takes your plan and the rest of each message’s price from your Sema credit. See how paying works.

Each number on the Numbers page shows:

• Receiving messages once Meta is sending customers’ messages to Sema; Not receiving yet for the first minutes after connecting.
• Quality: Meta’s rating of how customers react to your messages (High, Medium or Low, or Not rated yet).
• Daily limit: how many different customers you may start conversations with in a day.

Both are explained in keeping your number healthy.

Under each account, How customers know it is really you lists what WhatsApp shows them, as Meta reports it:

• whether Meta has verified your business;
• whether Meta has approved your display name;
• whether you have the Official Business Account badge;
• how much of your business profile is filled in.

Anything not yet done says where to do it. Owners and admins can fill in the profile right there with Edit the profile: the about line, what you do, where you are, an email, your websites and a category. Sema sends it to WhatsApp, and the page then shows what WhatsApp holds. The picture is set in WhatsApp Manager.

Sema asks Meta every few hours. After you have been verified or have changed your name, press Check again to see it at once.

Meta gives Sema permission to use your number for a fixed time, usually 60 days, and then asks for it again. Numbers shows the date: Connected until….

• A week before it ends, owners and admins get a notice in Sema and an email.
• Press Reconnect on Numbers and go through Meta’s window again with the same number. It takes a minute, nothing is lost, and the new end date shows at once.
• If the day passes without reconnecting, messages stop until you do, and owners and admins are told again.

Each number is connected the same way, and each has its own conversations, quality and limit. On the Team page you can choose which team answers each number. When sending a template or a campaign, Send from picks the number.

WhatsApp is bringing in usernames: customers can find a business by its @username, and write to it without either side seeing the other's number. On the Numbers page, an owner or admin types the username they want under the number and presses Claim it. WhatsApp answers in a moment: live, or reserved for you until it opens usernames in your country. It allows two changes in 14 days. If another business has the name and it is really yours (another of your accounts), press It is ours: move it here.

A customer who writes by username and keeps their number hidden still reaches your inbox like anyone else. Their contact says Number not shared, you reply as usual, and if they share their number later the same contact takes it, with its history.