Product changelog and announcements

Twilio MMS can now be used to develop compliant healthcare applications that contain protected health information (PHI) for organizations that are subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Twilio will sign Business Associate Addendums (BAA) with covered entities and business associates for HIPAA Eligible Products and Services.

Learn more about how to build on Twilio for HIPAA compliance.

A subset of 5 A2P 10DLC Special Use Case campaigns require additional carrier approvals immediately following registration. These 5 post-approval use cases are now available for registration. Once a campaign information is submitted, it will remain in “review” until carriers grant approval on the campaign.

The special use cases that require carrier post-approval and are now available for registration via the Console and ISV APIs are:

• Agents; franchise; local branches
• Proxy (formerly Conversational)
• Emergency
• Social
• Sweepstakes

You can read more about these in our support article or API docs.

Businesses around the world can now send promotional or marketing template messages with the Twilio API for WhatsApp. Prior restrictions requiring notifications be related to specific transactions no longer apply. Businesses can now engage with their customers in new and exciting ways to drive better business outcomes such as sending timely renewal reminders, product upgrade offers, back in stock alerts, sale notices, promotional coupons, and much more!

For more details on how to send these messages using Twilio, please take a look at our documentation.

ISV customers registering their customers' US 10DLC Brands and Campaign Use Cases have full functional parity between the API and console registration experience for Starter and Standard.

Customers can now use the Trust Hub console to register Starter and Standard Brands and Campaign Use Cases. Illustrated screenshots and guidance on which brand type to choose for your customers is provided in the documentation.

ISV Customers with a registered US A2P ISV Brand can now test their API integrations with Twilio by registering Mock Brands and Campaigns. The Mock Brand and Campaign API allows you to develop and test applications against Twilio’s A2P Brand and Campaign APIs without incurring any A2P 10DLC related fees.

Mock brands and mock campaigns are created similarly to brands and campaigns registered against the non-mock A2P APIs. Any campaign registered alongside a Mock Brand will automatically be considered a Mock Campaign and will not allow Messages to be routed on US A2P routes. And Mock Brands and campaigns expire after 30 days. These are some important restrictions and considerations to keep in mind when you’re using this API, with detailed explanations available in this guide.

ISV customers can now view additional brand registration information for any Secondary Brand they are registering for US A2P 10DLC. On the successful registration of an A2P brand, customers can view this additional information when using the GET Brand Registration API.

“russell_3000” is returned ‘true’ by TCR when the brand is verified as a Russell 3000 brand.

“tax_exempt_status” returns the verified tax-exempt status of a US-based nonprofit brand, such as ‘501c3’, as verified by TCR. Otherwise, this is returned as ‘N/A’.

“skip_automatic_sec_vet” is returned 'true' for ISV customers who choose to skip automated secondary vetting for a secondary brand.

You can find more details for these in ISV Onboarding API docs.

ISV customers can now choose to skip automated secondary vetting for any Secondary Brand they are registering for US A2P 10DLC. Twilio continues to recommend secondary vetting because it raises both campaign throughput and daily volume limits beyond minimums allowed by carriers. With automated secondary vetting, customers can maximize throughput and daily limits without extra registration steps.

That being said, we understand that some of our ISV customers may not want to complete secondary vetting for some of their customers based on the additional vetting fees and the usage patterns of those customers. Customers can review the usage limits available to a brand without secondary vetting in throughput for US A2P 10DLC.

This parameter SkipAutomaticSecVet is an optional parameter during brand registration, which can be used to skip secondary vetting for an A2P brand. You can find more details in ISV Onboarding API docs.

A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration for all 501(c) nonprofit organizations is now available as part of Twilio’s A2P 10DLC Console and ISV API onboarding experience.Nonprofit organizations can register using the Charity / 501(c)(3), Political, or Standard use cases depending on their entity type:

• 501(c)(3) organizations should register campaigns with the Charity / 501(c)(3) special use case. Charity / 501(c)(3) is a reserved use case for 501(c)(3)s to receive discounts on A2P carrier fees.
• 501(c)(4), 501(c)(5), and 501(c)(6) organizations sending messages that are political in nature should register with the Political special use case, or register non-political messaging with standard campaign use cases. The Political use case receives increased messaging throughput on A2P.
• All other 501(c) designations should register their campaigns with standard campaign use cases.

For more details on the Charity / 501(c)(3) and Political campaign use cases, please see this support article on special use cases.

Note: We're still working to enable registration for 527 Political organizations and for the Emergency Special use case.

Messaging Customers are required by U.S. carriers to register for A2P 10DLC. Independent Software Vendors that offer other customers the ability send SMS and MMS need to register themselves as an ISV brand via Trust Hub in the Twilio console and then they can register each customer as a Standard Brand or a Starter Brand. Registered Brands can then register use case campaigns.

Starter Brand registration is now available for all independent software vendor (ISV) customers to register your customers for US 10DLC compliance and send SMS and MMS in the US with 10-digit long codes. Starter Brand registration is intended for customers who send fewer than 3,000 daily SMS segments and MMS messages over 10-digit long codes AND use five or fewer 10-digit U.S. long codes. Twilio is covering the costs for Starter Brand registration and monthly campaign fees.

ISV Customers can read the Starter Brand overview and step-by-step API walkthrough as they prepare to register their customers.

Twilio continues to streamline registration with US Carriers for Long Code Messaging (A2P 10DLC). All A2P brand registrations are now subject to an additional $40 one-time vetting fee. Twilio will automate the vetting process and cover the vetting fee for primary Brands until October 1, 2021 and Secondary Brands created for ISVs until August 21, 2021.

With automated secondary vetting, you will benefit from:

1. Increased daily messaging limits to T-Mobile. See the article ‘T-Mobile daily message limits for long code messaging with A2P 10DLC’ for details.
2. Increased throughput on your campaigns since secondary vetting will ensure accuracy of information and maximizing the TCR Score. See more details in our support article ‘Message throughput (MPS) and Trust Scores for A2P 10DLC in the U.S.’

There is no special action needed from customers to benefit from secondary vetting after this change, it will automatically be triggered for all brands registering for US A2P compliance.