Prepaid billing

1. Add funds. An admin on the account adds funds to the Messaging account in the Billing Hub⁠, paying by UPI. The funds appear as Available funds on the account.
2. Send. When you call the messages endpoint, WhatsApp checks that the current balance covers the cost of the message plus any charges already incurred but not yet settled, inclusive of applicable taxes. If it does not, the message is rejected. The rejection can reach your integration either as an error on the send call, or as a messages status webhook with status of failed and error code 131042 — so your integration must handle both. When the rejection comes back on the webhook, the send call itself still returns accepted. See Insufficient-funds webhook. Separately, the admins on the account are notified when the balance is low or empty; those notifications go to people, not to your webhook endpoint. See Low balance notifications.
3. Deliver. When a message is delivered, its cost is recorded as pending spend and counted in subsequent balance checks. The underlying stored-balance wallet is debited later during settlement.
4. Settle. Held charges are settled against the balance on a recurring basis, and appear on your invoices and receipts as usual.

{
  "messaging_product": "whatsapp",
  "contacts": [{ "input": "919xxxxxxxxx", "wa_id": "919xxxxxxxxx" }],
  "messages": [{ "id": "wamid.HBgM...", "message_status": "accepted" }]
}

{
  "object": "whatsapp_business_account",
  "entry": [{
    "id": "WHATSAPP_BUSINESS_ACCOUNT_ID",
    "changes": [{
      "field": "messages",
      "value": {
        "messaging_product": "whatsapp",
        "metadata": { "display_phone_number": "...", "phone_number_id": "..." },
        "statuses": [{
          "id": "wamid.HBgM...",
          "status": "failed",
          "timestamp": "1755600000",
          "recipient_id": "919xxxxxxxxx",
          "errors": [{
            "code": 131042,
            "title": "Business eligibility payment issue",
            "message": "Business eligibility payment issue",
            "error_data": {
              "details": "Message failed to send because there were one or more errors related to your payment method."
            },
            "href": "https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/cloud-api/support/error-codes/"
          }]
        }]
      }
    }]
  }]
}

• Subscribe to messages webhooks and inspect the error details. 131042 is a payment-eligibility failure, not proof that the current balance is insufficient.
• Do not retry immediately in a tight loop. Back off, or pause the queue for that account, and surface the condition to whoever administers the account.
• Pause bulk sends if payment-eligibility failures repeat. Check the current balance and payment eligibility before resuming.
• Reconcile against delivery, not acceptance. Use sent and delivered statuses as your record of what was billable.
• Use the error details and current account state to decide whether to add funds, slow sending, or escalate.

• Funds can be added only through the Billing Hub⁠. There is no add-funds API.
• An account cannot move between prepaid and invoiced billing. The payment method is fixed once set; using a different one requires creating a new Messaging account.
• The current balance cannot be read through the API.
• Prepaid funds cannot be shared across Messaging accounts.
• Funds are held in INR and cannot be converted to another currency.

• Pricing
• Status messages webhook reference
• Cloud API error codes