The WABA lives inside a Meta business portfolio, and belongs to only one portfolio. A business creates it once, then attaches one or several phone numbers to it, each with its own display name, business profile and quality rating.
Meta's documentation lists the limits that matter (as of October 8, 2026): a WABA can hold a maximum of 250 message templates, a business portfolio starts with 2 registered phone numbers (a limit that can be raised to 20) and 20 WABAs. Messaging limits are no longer set per number: since October 7, 2025 they are set for the whole business portfolio and shared by all its numbers.
Merchants rarely create a WABA by hand. It is usually generated during onboarding with a partner, through Meta's Embedded Signup flow, then managed from WhatsApp Manager in Meta Business Suite. Meta is also testing a new account model, in beta, that splits the WABA into one account for phone numbers and one for templates and billing.
With Kanal, a WhatsApp marketing and sales app for Shopify stores, the WABA is created or connected when the merchant links a WhatsApp number to the store: see WhatsApp for Shopify.
