WhatsApp Business Account (WABA)

The top-level entity in the WhatsApp Business Platform. A WABA owns a business’s WhatsApp presence: its business phone numbers, its approved message templates, display name, and messaging settings. Every API call and every message is scoped to a WABA.

Key points from whatsapp-business-platform-docs:

• Created and managed under a Meta Business account; requires phone-number registration and verification before sending.
• Governs auth — access tokens and permissions are issued against the WABA.
• Is the unit an integrator targets, whether directly (via an SDK like wapi-go) or through a BSP‘s embedded-signup flow, where the end business gets its own WABA without integrating Meta itself.

The WABA is why WhatsApp business messaging is a permissioned channel rather than an open one: identity, verification, and metering all attach here.