Twilio.com's New Business Profile Requirements for 10-Digit Phone Number Churches

Important Twilio.com Changes for 10-Digital Phone (Longcode) Churches

In this article, we'll overview Twilio's upcoming changes for 10-digit phone numbers. If you are a church using a 10-digit long code, you may have recently received an email from Twilio.com with the subject "[Twilio Messaging - Advisory Alert] Improved AT&T Long Code Connectivity, Registration Requirements, and Price Changes." For your convenience, we have a screenshot of the email body below (if needed). Please note if your church uses a toll-free or shortcode number, you may discard this article as it currently only applies to non-toll-free 10-digit long code phone numbers. 

The notification appears to bring positive news of possible higher delivery speeds for 10-digit phone numbers. According to Twilio, "... the most important thing to you is getting your messages delivered to your end-users quickly and reliably. We’ve been working with the U.S. carrier ecosystem to improve long code messaging. Once you register your campaign, you will benefit from lower filtering and higher reliability. In the near future, you will also be eligible to send messages greater than 1 message per second (MPS). We’re excited to bring this to you and will provide additional updates in the coming weeks."

Twilio's Improved AT&T Long Code COnnectivity, Registration Requirements, and Price Changes Notification:

Directions: Click on the image below to view a large readable version of the Twilio notification.

What Does This Mean for the Church?

Twilio appears to now require completing a business profile from the Twilio.com Console, which will allow upstream Cell Phone Carriers. The process is free and straightforward. We can only speculate, but it appears the cell phone industry is now recognizing the great need (purpose) for 10-digit phone numbers for application to end-user purposes. A business profile will allow Twilio and the upstream carriers to better understand the type of entity sending messages. We're hopeful this is good news for churches as it will allow a way for carriers to know a business is legit and not using Twilio for fraudulent purposes. As you may already be aware, a long-term battle with carriers and spam on text messages and phone calls has been a major issue. We suspect this is a method that Twilio has worked outwith upstream carriers to allow legit traffic to obtain a higher level of service for a nominal cost increase.

What Action is Required?

Currently, the action is only required if you are a church that is using a 10-digit phone number known as a long code. From what we see, toll-free phone numbers do not currently apply to the registration requirement. However, that may be subject to change in the future, and it may still be a good idea to try to register your business profile with Twilio even if you have a toll-free number. Thankfully, Twilio has made the business profile registration process very simple and easy.

Ideally, before March 1st, 2021, churches will want to login to https://www.twilio.com/console/trust-hub to complete their business profile. You may click here to access the Twilio.com > Trust Hub > Customer Profile. For your convenience, we've included a recommendation of how to complete the business profile form below: 

What else do we have to do?

After registering your business, you may register a new campaign under the Twilio Trust Hub. From what we see, this aspect is optional but can lead to a discount in the upcoming AT&T surcharge and may also grant access to faster delivery speeds for 10-digit phone numbers. Currently, there is a one-time nominal campaign fee to create a new campaign within Twilio. However, currently from what we understand, churches may only need to create a single campaign to take advantage of the discount pricing and better delivery speeds.

For your convenience, we've included the specifics on the campaign registrations as provided by Twilio below. We strongly suggest when registering a Twilio.com campaign that the church put the purpose is for application to end-user communications such as sending out one-time login or registration codes, sending church updates/notifications, or similar. It may be possible to be discriminated against as a church if giving is mentioned as Twilio has been known not fully to understand text giving in the church realm. Should the church have any questions, please reach out to Twilio.com support by clicking here. You may also reach out to support@onlinegiving.org, and we can assist you directly.