WhatsApp for business in Singapore: what to send, who you can send it to, and how to keep your number

WhatsApp for business comes in two forms. WhatsApp's own guide calls the WhatsApp Business app "free-to-download", and says it "provides for one phone number". The WhatsApp Business Platform, which developers call the API, has no app. Software connects to it and sends and receives messages on your number, usually through a vendor's inbox or chatbot, and you pay to use it.

Pick the app if:

• one or two people answer the chats
• most chats start with a customer messaging you
• you follow up with people you've already spoken to

Look at the platform if many people answer one number, or you need software to send thousands of order updates or reminders. What is WhatsApp Business? compares the two side by side, and WhatsApp Business API pricing goes through what the platform costs.

Most owners give the business its own number, so customers never land in the family chats and a staff member can pick up the phone without seeing them.

1. Pick the number the business will use. If it's your current one, back up its chats first.
2. Download WhatsApp Business and register that number.
3. Fill in the business profile with your name, category, address, opening hours, website and email, because WhatsApp's policy asks for customer support contact details there and wants them kept up to date.
4. Write quick replies for the questions you answer every day, like price and where to find you.
5. Set a greeting for first-time chats and an away message for after hours.
6. Add labels for where each chat stands: New enquiry, Quote sent, Paid, Follow up.

Then put the number where customers look. A wa.me link or QR code on your shopfront, receipts and Instagram bio opens a chat with you without them saving your number first. The free WhatsApp link generator makes both.

The chats that go wrong are the ones nobody answers. A customer asks for a quote on Tuesday night, it sinks under forty other chats by Wednesday, and they've bought elsewhere by Thursday.

• Start each morning with unread chats and the New enquiry label, oldest first.
• Label a chat the moment you reply, so the list tells you what's still open.
• When you promise something ("I'll send the quote tomorrow"), put the day in your calendar or task list. A label can't remind you.
• If two people share the phone, agree who answers which chats, so a customer doesn't get two replies or none.

The Do Not Call rules are Part 9 of the Personal Data Protection Act. They cover a "specified message" sent to a Singapore telephone number: broadly, a message whose purpose, or one of whose purposes, is to offer, advertise or promote goods or services. The Act defines a message as "any message, whether in sound, text, visual or other form".

The PDPC's advisory guidelines describe the No Text Message Register as covering "any text, sound or visual message that is not a specified call or fax". On our reading, a marketing WhatsApp to a Singapore mobile number falls under the same rules as an SMS.

Before you send one, you need either:

• a check against the Do Not Call Registry made within 21 days before you send it, showing the number isn't listed, or
• the person's clear and unambiguous consent to those messages on that number, "evidenced in written or other form so as to be accessible for subsequent reference".

Some messages aren't marketing messages at all. The PDPC's guidelines say a message sent "for the sole purpose of responding to a request from an individual for information about a good or service" isn't one. The Act's Eighth Schedule also leaves out a message whose sole purpose is to complete or confirm a transaction the customer already agreed to, and a message sent to an organisation for its own purposes.

Here's how that plays out for a made-up bakery, on our reading:

This is a summary, not legal advice. When you're not sure, check the number or ask first.

The simplest way to stay inside the rules is to ask customers, in person or on a form, whether they want your offers on WhatsApp, and keep the answer.

• Ask a specific question they answer with a positive action, such as ticking a box at the counter or on your order form.
• Say what they're agreeing to: offers and new products, sent to this number on WhatsApp.
• Record the yes with the date and where it came from.
• Don't make it a condition of the sale. The Act says consent required as a condition of supplying something, beyond what's reasonable to supply it, isn't validly given.
• Don't ask for the yes in a WhatsApp to a number you haven't checked, because the PDPC's guidelines treat a message sent to get consent for marketing as a marketing message itself.

WhatsApp asks for the same thing. Its Business Messaging Policy, which covers the Business app and the Business Platform, says you may only contact people on WhatsApp if "they have given you their mobile phone number" and "you have received opt-in permission from the recipient confirming that they wish to receive subsequent messages or calls from you."

WhatsApp's policy says people "can block or report businesses" and that its systems "may limit the amount of messages a business can send" based on that feedback. A broadcast sent to people who didn't expect it is how a number loses its reach.

• Send promotions only to people who said yes, or whose numbers you checked against the registry in the last 21 days.
• Put your business name and how to reach you in the message. Section 44 of the Act requires both in a marketing message.
• Use their name, and write it the way you'd text a regular customer.
• Add a way out, such as "Reply STOP and we won't send these again", and take anyone who replies STOP off the list that day.
• Send a test to your own phone first.

For a customer's first message, a booking reminder or a thank-you after a sale, the WhatsApp message templates are free to copy.

• Messaging every contact on the phone about a sale.
• Adding a promotion to an order update and treating it as an order update.
• Asking for consent by WhatsApp to a number you haven't checked.
• Asking customers to send photos of their NRIC. WhatsApp's policy says not to ask for personal ID card numbers.
• A profile with no business name, hours or way to contact you.
• Ignoring a STOP.

Selling financial products? The rules for financial advisors add MAS's guidelines on top of these.

This guide is free. ActivityTracker, the app we make, is paid, and here's what it does for a business on WhatsApp.

• The WhatsApp inbox puts every chat from your number on one screen, and your team works it from their own phones or laptops
• A new customer who messages gets a card in your client list, with the chat on it
• Assign a chat to the teammate who knows the customer, and leave notes the customer can't see
• Broadcasts go out one message at a time, spaced out, only in the hours you set, and leave out anyone marked as opted out

Your number is linked as a device, the way WhatsApp Web is, not through the Business Platform. WhatsApp's linked devices page warns that "linking your device through unofficial apps or websites may put your account at risk." The WhatsApp integration page explains how the link works and how the app paces the messages your number starts.