BSP, Tech Provider, Tech Partner or Solution Partner: who bills you?

Why the label matters

South African WhatsApp providers describe themselves as "BSP", "Premier Partner", "Meta Business Partner", "Tech Provider", "accredited" or "official". Some of those words come from Meta's partner programme, some are older industry shorthand, and some are just marketing. The label tells you two things you actually care about:

• Who pays Meta for your messages, and so whether you can see Meta's real rates or only an all-in price.
• What the provider can do on your behalf, such as submitting your business for verification or onboarding you without a card on file.

Everything below comes from Meta's Partners overview on developers.facebook.com, unless another Meta page is linked.

The provider types, in Meta's words

Meta says partners are businesses "that deploy value-added solutions… on behalf of their clients. Partners include Solution Partners, Tech Providers, and Tech Partners." Meta's partner documentation doesn't list BSP as a separate category, but the term is still everywhere.

BSP (Business Solution Provider)

BSP is the older industry term, still widely used, for what Meta's partner documentation now calls a Solution Partner. Meta's developer URLs still use the phrase "solution-providers", and many vendors still say BSP on their websites. When a provider says "we are a BSP", read it as a claim to be a Solution Partner, and check it the way we describe further down.

Solution Partner

Meta describes Solution Partners as Meta Business Partners "that provide a full range of WhatsApp Business Platform services to other businesses (clients), such as messaging services, billing, integration support, and customer support." What sets them apart is money:

• They have credit lines that "can be extended to clients who they bring on board, thus removing the need for those clients to enter their own payment method."
• They "can directly invoice their clients" for WhatsApp Business Platform usage.
• Solution Partners can start WhatsApp account creation for a client, which the client then approves. Meta documents this as a Solution Partner feature.
• Approved Select and Premier Solution Partners can submit a client's business for verification on its behalf, which Meta says "has a much faster turnaround time" (Partner-led Business Verification).

Meta also notes that "becoming a Solution Partner is a lengthy process", and suggests the Tech Provider route to companies that don't need a credit line or to invoice clients for API usage.

Tech Provider

In Meta's words, Tech Providers "can offer a full range of WhatsApp Business Platform services to other businesses". The difference is billing: "Tech Providers do not have credit lines. Instead, clients onboarded by Tech Providers must provide their own payment method after onboarding is complete. Meta will then bill these clients for API usage, and the Tech Provider will bill for other services."

Tech Providers connect clients through Meta's Embedded Signup, a Meta-hosted sign-in where you choose or create your own WhatsApp account and grant the provider access to it. Tech Providers have access to Meta's Direct Support, but are not Meta Business Partners.

Tech Partner

"Tech Partners are Tech Providers who are, or are eligible to become, Meta Business Partners." To upgrade, a Tech Provider needs, among other things, at least 2,500 average daily messages (or 200 average daily calls) over the last 7 days, 10 or more active clients, and a phone-number quality rating of 90% or better. The upgrade brings the Meta Business Partner name and programme benefits. It does not bring a credit line: in Meta's comparison table, Tech Partners still don't bill customers for API usage.

Going direct, and resellers

Two more routes sit outside the partner types. A business with its own developers can use the Cloud API directly, with no provider at all. Some local companies also resell another provider's platform under their own name. In that case, the provider behind the reseller decides who bills you.

Side-by-side comparison

The first six rows come from Meta's Partners overview: the first from its descriptions of each type, the next five from its comparison table. The last two come from the Meta pages listed under the table.

Sources: Partners overview, Partner-led Business Verification and Partner-initiated account creation, checked 26 October 2026.

Who bills you, and why it changes the price

Meta publishes a rate card per country. For South Africa from 1 October 2026, Meta charges US$0.0379 per marketing message and US$0.0095 per utility, authentication or service message, with the first 1,000 service messages per business phone number each month free (Meta pricing). Our pricing page works these out in rand.

When Meta bills you (the Tech Provider and Tech Partner model), you add your own card to your Messaging account and Meta charges you exactly its rate card. Your provider sends a separate invoice for its software or services. You can see both numbers. Meta does not bill in rand: it supports 16 billing currencies and ZAR is not one of them, so SA businesses pay Meta in US dollars or another supported currency.

When your provider bills you (the Solution Partner model), Meta charges the provider's credit line and the provider invoices you. That is convenient: one invoice, perhaps in rand, and no card on Meta. But the price you see is whatever the provider charges, which may or may not equal Meta's rate. Some providers publish their fee on top. Twilio, for example, publishes a fee of US$0.005 per message, inbound or outbound, on top of Meta's template fee, which it passes through on its invoice (Twilio pricing, "current as of September 2026"). Others publish an all-in rate, or no rate at all.

Where Codeswop sits, honestly

Euphony is a brand of Codeswop (Pty) Ltd in Cape Town. Codeswop is a Meta Tech Provider. It is not a Solution Partner, not a Tech Partner, and not a Meta Business Partner. In practice that means:

• You own the account. You connect your own WhatsApp account through Meta's Embedded Signup. Meta bills you directly, at Meta's rates. We add nothing to message costs.
• We charge for planning, building and running. A R5,000 ex VAT event storming session ends with a fixed fee for the build, from R15,000 ex VAT, plus R7,500 per integration, and running from R4,950 ex VAT a month (see pricing). We invoice these separately from Meta's charges.
• You need a card on Meta. We have no credit line, so we can't take Meta's charges onto our invoice. Without a payment method, Meta delivers service messages within the free tier of 1,000 a month but not after it (Meta pricing).
• You verify your own business. Partner-led verification is for Select and Premier Solution Partners only. We can coach you through Meta's business verification: the documents, the matching website and email domain, and the usual reasons for rejection. See our verification guide.
• Our onboarding pace is capped. Meta lets a Tech Provider onboard 10 new clients in a rolling 7 days, rising to 200 once it completes business verification, App Review and access verification (Embedded Signup overview). This is a limit on how many new businesses we can connect each week, not on the messages you send.

Who is this model a poor fit for? A business that needs one invoice covering Meta's fees, can't put a card on a Meta account, or needs a partner to submit its verification. For those, a Solution Partner is the right call. Meta also allows a multi-partner solution, where a Tech Provider and a Solution Partner onboard a client together and the client shares the Solution Partner's credit line. We don't offer one today.

What this means if you switch providers

Since Meta's new account model became generally available on 23 September 2026, you no longer migrate your number between providers. You share your WhatsApp account with the new provider, and the number stays put. "Each partner working with a client gets their own Messaging account… Each Messaging account has its own payment method" (Updates to WhatsApp Business accounts). Templates don't carry over automatically: they have to be recreated in the new Messaging account.

So moving from a Solution Partner to a Tech Provider changes who bills you. You'll add a card for the new Messaging account, which Meta bills separately from the old provider's. Once you've moved, stop sharing your account with the old provider and settle anything it still invoices you for. Meta also warns that if a client "still shares the previous credit line, they may see an error when attempting to switch to a new partner" (Meta). Ask your old provider to stop sharing it. The full steps are on our switching page.

How to check a provider's claim

1. Ask who bills you for messages. This one answer tells you more than any badge. Only a Solution Partner, or a provider working with one, can put Meta's fees on its own invoice.
2. Look for the provider in Meta's partner showcase. Meta lists Meta Business Partners in its partner showcase. A Tech Provider won't be listed there, and that's expected: Tech Providers are not Meta Business Partners.
3. Watch the Embedded Signup screen. When you connect, Meta's own screen names the app and the business you're granting access to. That is who actually has access to your account. With Euphony, you'll see our platform's app, "Keychat", and the business portfolio "Keychat Solutions", which is Codeswop (Pty) Ltd's Meta business.
4. Check whose Meta business owns your WhatsApp account. In Meta Business Suite, see which business portfolio owns it. If it isn't yours, ask why before you sign.

Meta only allows badged partners to "publicly position themselves as a Meta Business Partner" (Meta Business Partner programme policies). The Solution Partner tiers Meta names in its documentation are Select and Premier. Words like "official" or "accredited" are not partner types.

Frequently asked questions