My number is already in use on the WhatsApp Business app

The most common fear before moving to the WhatsApp API: "my number has been on the WhatsApp Business app for years and every customer conversation is in there."

The good news

A number already active on the WhatsApp Business app can be connected without losing anything. This is an official Meta feature, coexistence mode, not a workaround:

• Your old chats and contacts stay on the phone.
• The phone can still be used to reply exactly as before.
• The team inbox runs alongside it, and messages answered from the phone are recorded there too.

Step by step

The flow runs through Meta's own popup. WACO never sees your Meta password.

1. In the dashboard open Connect and choose "Connect an existing number", not "Connect a new number".
2. Sign in to your Meta account in the popup. At the WhatsApp Business Account step, choose "Connect the WhatsApp Business App".
3. The popup shows a QR code along with options to share contacts and chat history. The last six months come across into the team inbox, which is what gives your team immediate context.
4. On the phone, open the WhatsApp Business app on that number and scan the QR code. If a message from the official Facebook account appears with a Connect to the Business Platform button, tap it and follow along. If there is no message, go to Settings, Account, Business Platform.
5. Carry on until the popup in the browser says it is finished. Do not close the popup before that. A pairing left hanging for more than 24 hours has to be restarted from the beginning.

If the scan did not complete, the Number card in the dashboard shows a "Phone setup incomplete" marker with a "Rescan QR" link to reopen the popup. Repeating the scan costs nothing.

If Meta says the number is not eligible

When you enter the number, Meta's popup may refuse with: "Your phone number isn't eligible to connect to the WhatsApp Business Platform. More activity on the WhatsApp Business App is needed" (code #3441045).

What it means is that nothing is wrong. Meta simply has not seen enough activity on your WhatsApp Business app to judge eligibility for coexistence. The gate exists to stop new or dormant numbers being used for spam, and Meta does not publish the threshold.

The order we recommend:

1. Try again a little later. This refusal is sometimes temporary, and we have had customers rejected and then accepted on a retry the same day.
2. If it still refuses, use the app actively. Answer customer chats from the app as normal for a week or two, then retry the pairing. Real activity is the only thing that moves Meta's assessment.
3. In a hurry? Use a different number that has never been on WhatsApp and register it as a new number, which goes through OTP verification without this gate. Your old number keeps working in the app. Deleting the account in the app in order to re-register is also possible, but it sacrifices the phone app, so think it through and talk to us first.

If Meta says "not eligible to register or migrate" (#3441034)

This message is different from the one above, and the cause is almost always the same: your number was once linked directly to Meta Business Suite — usually enabled from the WhatsApp Business app on the phone so chats could be answered from the Business Suite inbox. That link creates a special WhatsApp Business account that is locked: it cannot be shared with any platform (not just WACO), and the number will never appear in the connection popup.

How to recognise it: open Business settings → WhatsApp accounts in Meta Business Manager. If there is an account labelled "WhatsApp Business app" holding your number, and its Assign partner button is disabled with "maximum number of assigned partners" even though the partner list is empty — that is it.

The fix: remove the old link first, then connect to WACO.

1. Disconnect WhatsApp from the Meta Business Suite inbox (the Settings icon on the Inbox page), or delete that "WhatsApp Business app" account from Business settings → WhatsApp accounts → … → Delete. Your chats and contacts are not lost — they all live in the app on the phone; only the bridge to Business Suite is removed.
2. Wait ±5 minutes.
3. Repeat "Connect your existing number" from WACO as described above.

The only consequence: anyone who used to reply from the Business Suite inbox can no longer reply there — its replacement is the WACO shared inbox, which does more anyway.

One limit worth knowing

A number running in coexistence has a lower send rate for outgoing bulk messages. For normal conversations and ordinary notifications you will never notice it. If you plan to send thousands of messages at once, tell us beforehand.