WhatsApp Business phone number suddenly changed to EXPIRED status - exactly 4 months apart

Questions
1

:bullseye: What is your goal?

Understand why our WhatsApp Business phone number spontaneously goes EXPIRED and how to prevent it

:thinking: What is the problem & what have you tried?

Our WhatsApp Business phone number suddenly changed to EXPIRED status without any action on our side. The number was actively sending and receiving messages in the morning and went EXPIRED around midday. This has happened twice now, exactly 4 months apart. The exact interval strongly suggests an automated process on Meta’s side that triggers this status change.
Has anyone else experienced this? How can it be prevented or automatically resolved?
Reauthorization didn’t work so in the end we fixed our connection by creating a new WABA and reregistering the number, but this caused significant production downtime.

4

Hi @Gert-Jan_van_O

This is a whatsapp certificate validity issue. Avoid full WABA recreation as it’s obviously going to take time and if you’re you’rechanging the number every 4 months it will greatly affect your business credibility. The 4 months recurring expiration is due to Meta’s policies for certificate validity/renewal for these registrations and it is automated from their end.

This isn’t about your access tokens because the renewals/validations are tied to that specific phone number’s registration cert. Renewing your whatsapp number’s cert is always better than creating an entire new WABA. I also recommend you get a backup whatsapp number created like a month after the current one goes into effect so that your business keeps running when you’re working on the 4 months recurring certificate validation/creation.

I also recommend using a permanent access token so that you don’t have to touch your make.com scenarios. You can only fix the certificate issues from Meta’s end ASAP and your scenarios will resume normally.

Feel free to add follow up questions.

5

Thanks a lot for the response.
Does this mean I can make a scenario that re registers my phonenumber every 3.5 to 4 months?
POST /register with the PIN
Or do I need to wait for the expiration?

Last time reregistering fixed it with the legacy WABA connection; now it didn’t work with the Cloud API connection. The customer needed the app to work and setting up a new WABA doesn’t take that much time. It is a shame to do so, I agree.

I already have a permanent token.

I proposed a back up number to the customer and a timed switch in the application to switch scenario’s to send the template message from the other phonenumber as a back up for any issues.