--- title: "WhatsApp Business API Provider (BSP): What to Ask" description: "What a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP) does, Meta's three kinds of partner, who bills you, and what to ask before you choose one." url: https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-solution-provider/ updated: 2026-10-01 --- [Resources](https://getrapio.com/resources/) › API providers (BSPs) # What a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider does, and what to ask one BSP, Solution Partner, Tech Provider: what the names mean, who owns your account, who pays Meta, and the questions that separate one provider from another. By Ömer İlhan, Founder · Updated 1 October 2026 · 4 min read In short A WhatsApp Business Solution Provider — a BSP — is a company that connects other businesses to the WhatsApp Business Platform. Meta's documentation sorts these companies into three kinds of partner: Solution Partners, Tech Providers and Tech Partners. All of them send through the same [Cloud API](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-cloud-api/) at the same Meta prices. What differs is who owns your account, who pays Meta, and what the software does on top. ## BSP, and the names Meta uses Three kinds of partner, one platform. "BSP" is the name most people search for. In Meta's documentation the same companies are partners — businesses that provide WhatsApp messaging services to other businesses — and they come in three kinds: | | Solution Partner | Tech Provider | Tech Partner | |---|---|---|---| | Offers the full platform to other businesses | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Can pay Meta for you from its own credit line | Yes | No | No | | Who bills you for Meta's messages | The partner | Meta | Meta | | Is a Meta Business Partner | Yes | No | Yes | A Tech Partner is a Tech Provider that has also been accepted as a Meta Business Partner. A Tech Provider can work together with a Solution Partner that brings the credit line; Meta calls that a Multi-Partner Solution. ## Who pays Meta Your card, or the provider's credit line. It changes what you see. **Your own card** — You add a payment method to your WhatsApp Business Account after you connect. Meta charges it at its list price, and the provider bills only for its own service. This is how Tech Providers and Tech Partners work. **The provider's credit line** — A Solution Partner can pay Meta for you and invoice you instead. Meta's charge reaches you inside the partner's invoice, often with a markup, and Meta no longer shows you its own cost figure for those messages. Either way, Meta's charge is the same: per delivered message, set by the category and the recipient's country. [What a marketing message costs, country by country.](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-api-cost/) ## Who owns the account The account should sit in your business portfolio, not the provider's. Your [WhatsApp Business Account](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-account/) holds your templates and phone numbers and carries your number's quality history. When you connect a product built on the platform, Meta opens its own signup window: you choose the account, see what you are granting, and the account stays in your [business portfolio](https://getrapio.com/resources/glossary/#business-portfolio). An account can be shared with up to two partners at a time (as of October 2026), and you can remove a partner's access. If the account was created in the provider's portfolio instead, it belongs to the provider's business, and so do the templates on it. ## Do you need a provider at all? Only if you don't want to build the software yourself. Meta's Cloud API is open to any business. A company with developers can build on it directly — one API call per message, plus the sending queue, limits, retries and webhooks, and then the screens a marketing team works in. Meta's own documentation sends businesses that only build for themselves to the Cloud API's get-started guide; partner programs are for companies that serve other businesses. Everyone else uses a product built on the platform. [The three ways to use it](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-platform/) compares the options side by side. ## Is it the official API? Every approved route goes through the Cloud API. Meta shut down the self-hosted On-Premises API on October 23, 2025. Since then, every approved way of sending WhatsApp messages in bulk goes through the Cloud API — directly, or through the Marketing Messages API, a second route Meta built for marketing messages that carries the same templates. Ask a provider which of the two it sends through. Any other answer means it isn't using the platform. ## Questions to ask a provider Nine questions that separate one WhatsApp API service provider from another. 1. Is the WhatsApp Business Account in our business portfolio, or in yours? 2. Who pays Meta — our card at Meta's list price, or your invoice? If yours, what do you add per message? 3. Which currency will we be billed in? 4. If we leave, do our number, templates and quality history stay with us? 5. Do you send through the Cloud API, the Marketing Messages API, or both? 6. Is someone who stopped our marketing messages left out of every later send automatically? 7. When our list is bigger than our [messaging limit](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-messaging-limits/), is the send split across days? 8. Do our reports outlive Meta's own analytics window? 9. Which permissions does Meta's signup window ask us to grant, and why each one? Where Rapio fits Rapio isn't a Solution Partner and doesn't resell messages. It's software that connects to your own WhatsApp Business Account through Meta's signup window: the account stays in your portfolio, Meta bills the messages to your card at its list price, and Rapio charges a fixed monthly fee for the software. ## Sources 1. [Partners overview](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/solution-providers/overview) — Meta 2. [Get started for Tech Providers](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/solution-providers/get-started-for-tech-providers) — Meta 3. [Share and revoke credit lines](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/solution-providers/share-and-revoke-credit-lines) — Meta 4. [Pricing analytics](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/analytics#pricing-analytics) — Meta 5. [Marketing Messages API](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/marketing-messages/overview) — Meta 6. [On-Premises API sunset](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/on-premises/sunset) — Meta ## Keep reading - [How to set up your account for marketing messages](https://getrapio.com/resources/set-up-whatsapp-business-account/) - [What WhatsApp charges for a marketing message](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-api-cost/) - [WhatsApp Business Account (WABA), explained](https://getrapio.com/resources/whatsapp-business-account/) [Glossary](https://getrapio.com/resources/glossary/) · [All resources](https://getrapio.com/resources/)