Ofcom said on November 12 that it has fined Meta £450,000 for supplying inaccurate information about its WhatsApp Business service in response to statutory information requests. The data was requested for a review of the UK business bulk SMS market, and Ofcom found that some errors went uncorrected for up to 11 months. The penalty started at £600,000 and was cut by 25% after Meta accepted liability and agreed to settle.
What Ofcom found
According to Reuters, Ofcom concluded that Meta breached five separate information requirements under the UK Communications Act across two requests, by failing to provide complete and accurate information. Meta supplied inaccurate data on multiple occasions, and some of those inaccuracies were only fixed when corrected data arrived up to 11 months later.
The fine was set at £600,000 and reduced by a quarter to £450,000. Ofcom gave three reasons: Meta accepted liability, agreed to settle, and did not benefit from the inaccurate submissions. Meta said it takes its regulatory obligations seriously and had cooperated fully with the investigation.
Why WhatsApp Business was in an SMS review
Ofcom reviewed the business bulk SMS market in 2025 and asked messaging platforms for data, including WhatsApp Business messaging volumes and revenues. The Register reported in January that the two statutory notices, dated 31 July 2024 and 19 June 2025, sought data on how WhatsApp Business competes in application-to-person messaging: the parcel updates, appointment reminders and login codes that businesses send at scale.
Ofcom opened the formal investigation in January 2026. The fine is about the accuracy of what Meta told the regulator, not about how WhatsApp Business itself operates or is priced.
Who this affects
Nothing changes in Ads Manager or the WhatsApp Business Platform because of this decision. The relevance for advertisers is the signal: regulators now treat WhatsApp as a real competitor to SMS for business messaging, and Meta's messaging business is under closer scrutiny in the UK alongside the separate fights over its commercial terms and online-safety information requests.
If you run click-to-WhatsApp campaigns or use WhatsApp for order updates and lead follow-up in the UK, the channel is being studied as market infrastructure. That usually comes before rules on pricing, interoperability or data access, though Ofcom has announced nothing of that kind here.
What to do
No action is needed today. It is still worth keeping your messaging stack flexible: if a client's funnel depends on WhatsApp conversations after the click, make sure lead data also lands in your own CRM and that you have an SMS or email fallback for transactional messages.
What it means for you
- Ofcom fined Meta £450,000 (cut from £600,000) for inaccurate WhatsApp Business data.
- The fine is about information given to the regulator, not about ads or WhatsApp pricing.
- UK regulators now see WhatsApp Business as a direct rival to business SMS.
- Keep lead and order data in your own CRM, with SMS or email as a fallback channel.
Sources
- Reuters via The Star: Meta fined by UK regulator over repeated inaccuracies in WhatsApp Business data
- The Register: Ofcom probes Meta over WhatsApp info it was legally required to provide
