The Twilio API for WhatsApp is now available

Twilio has announced the Twilio API for WhatsApp that lets Twilio customers message with their users via WhatsApp for the first time. Twilio removes the operational overhead of managing and scaling WhatsApp for developers, making it a fast and reliable way for businesses to start communicating with the more than 1.5 billion users of WhatsApp. With one API, developers can use Twilio to integrate messaging via SMS, MMS, RCS, Facebook Messenger, LINE, and now, WhatsApp.

"New channels like WhatsApp provide rich experiences for end users interacting with developers and their applications around the world," said Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio. "We're excited to provide the most expansive set of messaging experiences to billions of end users, all via one easy to use API. We can't wait to see what developers build."

Consumers want to communicate with businesses with the same ease and richness in which they communicate with friends and family. That's why brands have increasingly turned to messages to communicate with their customers for service and support, alerts and notifications, automated bots and more. With the launch of WhatsApp for businesses, developers can now begin building experiences that allow their companies to more effectively reach users in parts of the world where WhatsApp is the de facto messaging app as well as benefit from capabilities WhatsApp is known for including deliverability insights and secure end-to-end encryption.

Prior to Twilio, supporting a variety of messaging channels meant wrestling with variations in API schemas, capabilities and toolings. Some channels have open APIs while others require a hosted deployment model that requires developers to test and maintain integrations with multiple APIs. With Twilio, developers no longer need to deal with this fragmentation in the messaging ecosystem, and instead, can focus on building the best customer experience, knowing that Twilio will help them reach their users wherever they are.   

Twilio enables developers to get started with WhatsApp instantly, with a sandbox environment for testing applications, a serverless environment for prototyping that includes Twilio Studio - a visual application builder, as well as helper libraries, API keys, debugging tools and other developer resources.

Twilio Flex, a fully programmable contact center platform, now supports WhatsApp so that customer service representatives can send and receive messages via WhatsApp using the same interface they use for SMS, voice, and other channels.