WhatsApp has introduced usernames: people can choose a username and use it to write to businesses and receive their messages, without sharing their phone number. Since September 2026 usernames are available worldwide.
In this article we explain how magnews handles contacts who use a username and what you need to check in your sender configuration.
The WhatsApp recipient field
To send WhatsApp messages, magnews uses the WhatsApp recipient contact field, which you find in the Settings category of the contact. The field contains:
- the contact's WhatsApp identifier, if they use a username;
- their mobile number, if they do not have a username.
This way, both contacts with a mobile number and contacts who only use a username receive your messages. This applies to communications and to the WhatsApp - Send message workflow node.
You do not need to fill in the field manually:
- when a contact writes to you on WhatsApp, magnews saves their identifier or their number in the WhatsApp recipient field;
- for contacts that only have the Mobile field, magnews automatically copies the number into the WhatsApp recipient field, about once an hour. This also aligns contacts coming from external sources, such as a CRM, an e-commerce platform, a file import or a landing page submission.
One-off sends from workflows: check the recipient
Since the alignment runs periodically, a contact that has just been created or updated may have the Mobile field filled in but the WhatsApp recipient still empty for a while. If you send them a message at that moment, the message is set to Not sent because the recipient is empty.
This is usually not a problem for scheduled communications, but it is for one-off sends, for example in a workflow that sends a WhatsApp template right after a contact is created or a landing page is submitted. In these cases, before the Send message node:
- add a decision node that checks whether the WhatsApp recipient field is empty;
- in the branch where the field is empty, add an Update contact node that fills in the WhatsApp recipient with the value of the Mobile field, using the update by expression;
- join both branches into the Send message node.
Do not update the WhatsApp recipient without checking it first: if the contact uses a username, the field contains their identifier, and overwriting it with the mobile number would make you lose it.
The WhatsApp - Send message node, which sends free-form text messages, buttons and lists, does not need this check: if the WhatsApp recipient is empty, it uses the Mobile field directly.
When a contact writes to you
When someone writes to you on WhatsApp, magnews looks for the contact in the databases you set in the sender settings, both by WhatsApp recipient and by Mobile number.
If the contact is not found, magnews creates it in the New contacts database, so you can handle it with your workflows like any other contact. The new contact has:
- in the Username and WhatsApp recipient fields, the WhatsApp identifier or, if there is none, the mobile number;
- in the Mobile field, the phone number, if WhatsApp provides it.
To find out more about workflows that start from a received message, read the article Use workflows to set up a WhatsApp conversation with contacts.
What to check: the new contacts database
To let magnews save people who write to you without a phone number too, the New contacts database must have:
- the Username field as its key;
- the Allow contacts without recipient setting enabled.
To check it, go to App Center > WhatsApp Business > Settings and click Settings in the sender card. In the Database Priority section you find the New contacts database field: the list only shows databases with the Username key.
If your sender still uses a database with the Mobile key, the database keeps working, but people who write to you without a phone number are not saved. Also, the first time you save the sender settings, magnews asks you to replace it with the message The database you choose must have the Username field as its primary key.
If you do not have a suitable database, you can create a dedicated one with the Username key and then select it in the sender settings.
In conversations
In the Conversations page, contacts who use a username are shown with their WhatsApp identifier instead of their phone number.