Short answer: since October 1, 2026 Meta also charges service messages on the official WhatsApp API, meaning the replies your business sends within the 24-hour window after a customer writes in. Those replies used to be free. If your WhatsApp Business account has no payment method in Meta, messages stop being delivered. This applies to the official API (the one AI assistants and platforms with a shared inbox use), not to the WhatsApp Business app on your phone.

Updated October 21, 2026.

What changed

Service messages are now billed. Free-form replies, without a template, inside the 24-hour window are now charged per message. Meta publishes the rate per country in its pricing table; according to the provider guides cited below, it matches the utility or authentication template rate for each country. Templates: per-message billing since July 1, 2025. On that date Meta stopped charging per conversation and started charging each delivered template (marketing, utility and authentication), priced by the customer's country. Click-to-WhatsApp ads. When a customer writes to you from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad, Meta opens a free window of up to 72 hours, according to its documentation.

In Colombia, each reply through the official API costs around COP 2.95. It looks small, but a business that sends 3,000 messages a month now gets a monthly bill from Meta that did not exist before.

What to do as a business in Colombia

1. Add a payment method to your Meta account. This is the most urgent step. Without a card on file, Meta stops delivering messages and your customers get no reply. Go to business.facebook.com → Business settings → WhatsApp accounts → Payment settings and add a card in Colombian pesos. Step by step in this guide (Spanish).

2. Reply in a single message. Meta charges every outgoing message. A reply split into four bubbles costs four times the same reply sent as one message. If you use a bot or an AI assistant, check that it does not chop its replies. TRUJO's assistant replies in a single message for exactly this reason.

3. Check your volume. Count how many messages your business sends per month and multiply by Meta's rate for Colombia. That tells you what your Meta bill will be and whether a plan that already includes it makes sense.

4. If you run ads, use Click-to-WhatsApp. Conversations that start from those ads get their free window, so well-run ads also save you messages.

Who pays Meta's charge at TRUJO

Messages sent through the official WhatsApp API are billed by Meta directly to your business, at cost and with no TRUJO markup: that charge never goes through us. On the Completo and Crecimiento plans, we pay it. Everything is on the pricing page.

Sources

Meta — WhatsApp Business Platform pricing Zoho — WhatsApp Business Platform message pricing guide WATI — WhatsApp service message pricing

Rates are set and changed by Meta. Before running big numbers, check the current table on Meta's official page.