Troubleshooting Phone Connection Issues

When a user reaches out about unusual issues related to phone connection and you're not sure how to proceed, work through the steps below in order.

When a user reaches out about unusual issues related to phone connection and you're not sure how to proceed, work through the steps below in order. Always ask the user for a screenshot or screen recording at every key step — they can easily miss something.

Step 1: Verify the Business Portfolio

Ask the user to send a screenshot of their Business info page.

If the Business Portfolio is not verified, ask the user to complete verification from the same page before proceeding.

Step 2: Check for restricted categories

Confirm that both the business category and the WABA (WhatsApp Business Account) category are not on the restricted list.

See the full list of restricted categories in the WhatsApp rules guide.

Step 3: Validate the display name

Check whether the display name for the phone number follows WhatsApp's naming rules.

Step 4: QR code can't be scanned (CoEx)

If the user is connecting a WhatsApp Business App number and the QR code can't be scanned, first ask them to try again after a few minutes.

If the issue persists, ask them to:

Open Billing hub in Meta Business Suite.
Look for "Payment failed" notifications next to their Ad and WhatsApp Business accounts.
Pay any outstanding amounts and wait ~10 minutes.
Try scanning the QR code again.

Step 5: "Your account is using marketing messages" error (CoEx)

If the user sees an error saying "Your account is using marketing messages" during connection, ask them to:

Open the WhatsApp Business app on their phone.
Go to Tools → Marketing messages.
Delete all marketing messages listed there.
Try connecting the phone number to Chatfuel again.

Step 6: Check if the Facebook account is restricted

Ask the user to check whether their personal Facebook account is restricted by visiting Ads Manager.

If the account is restricted, they have two options:

File an appeal with Meta Support at Business Support Home.
Use a colleague's account — grant a colleague admin permissions on the business account and have them connect the phone number instead. Important: warn the user not to log in to Facebook using their colleague's credentials, as this will get the colleague's account restricted too.

If the user wants to connect their WhatsApp to the bot but does not see their Business account in the popup window during setup, ask them to verify they have Full Control rights on the Meta Business Account they are trying to connect.

They can check this at Meta Business Account settings → People.