Some Kenyan businesses that use WhatsApp to talk to customers are about to get a bill. From 1 October 2026, Meta charges $0.0040, about KES 0.52, for every reply a business sends a customer. Meta’s developer documentation has set out the change.
If you sell from the free WhatsApp Business app on your phone, typing replies to customers yourself, nothing changes. That app stays free.
The charges affect a different product entirely. That’s the WhatsApp Business Platform, the paid API version. The types of businesses affected are like banks, airlines, large shops etc. The types of big businesses that plug their own systems so that thousands of messages go out automatically, and a chatbot or a call centre team handles the replies. Equity Bank’s EVA assistant, which we covered when it launched in 2022, runs on that side. So does anyone paying a messaging company to run their WhatsApp for them.
What actually becomes chargeable
Two things:
- The first is the ordinary reply, what Meta calls a service message. A customer asks a question, a human agent or a chatbot answers. Meta has not charged for these since November 2024. From 1 October it will.
- The second is narrower than it sounds. Utility messages are templates carrying information, like an order confirmation. Meta has always charged for one sent out of the blue. What has been free since July 2025 is the same template sent back inside a live conversation, and that is the bit now getting billed.
The 24-hour window
When a customer messages a business, a 24-hour clock starts, timed from when they sent it, and it restarts every time they write again. Free replies only work inside that window. Outside it, a business has to use a paid template.
Make tech-ish your favourite source
Star us on Google — you'll see more tech-ish in Top Stories and AI results.
There is one exemption, and in Kenya it is a big one. If the customer arrives by tapping a Click to WhatsApp advert and the business answers within 24 hours, a separate 72-hour window opens where everything stays free, replies included. Meta says that has not changed. Plenty of Kenyan online retail runs on those adverts, which arrived alongside WhatsApp’s own advertising rollout here in April.
One wrinkle does reach back into the free app. Meta Business Agent, the AI assistant launched globally on 3 June, is switched on from inside it, and Meta started billing for it on 1 August at $2.00 per million tokens, roughly KES 5.20 to KES 6.50 a reply. Turn that on and you are paying, free app or not.
What it costs
At KES 0.52, a business handling 100,000 chargeable replies a month owes Meta about KES 52,000, before whatever its messaging provider adds on top. Sending more does not earn a discount either. Meta says there will be no volume tiers on replies.
Kenya is not priced on its own. Meta lumps it into a Rest of Africa band, so Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda pay the same. Bizna Kenya has published a different Kenyan figure of $0.0044, and we could not open Meta’s rate card to settle it, so treat KES 0.52 as reported rather than confirmed.
Then the deadline. Any business on the Platform without a payment method on file by 30 September has its replies cut off on 1 October. If a messaging company runs your WhatsApp, ask them today whose card is on the account. Meta says it will publish the final rates, replies included, by 1 September.
Join the discussion