The WABA lives inside a Meta business portfolio. A business creates it once, then attaches one or several phone numbers to it, each with its own display name, profile, quality rating, and messaging limit.
Most operational assets hang off the WABA: message templates are submitted and approved at the WABA level, billing for conversations is attached to it, and business verification happens on the portfolio that owns it.
Merchants rarely touch the WABA directly. It is usually created during onboarding with a Business Solution Provider or a platform, through Meta's Embedded Signup flow, then managed from the WhatsApp Manager inside Meta Business Suite.
