Direct Sole Proprietor Registration Overview
This guide provides an overview for Direct customers who want to register A2P 10DLC messaging capabilities as a Sole Proprietor Brand. You will do this using the Twilio Console A2P registration tool, as directed below.
Following this process lets US Carriers know who you are and what types of messages you'll be sending to end-users. This is important so that end-users can trust that they are receiving legitimate SMS traffic and so that carriers do not filter your messages to your customers. Learn more about A2P regulations and registration options here.
Sole Proprietor registration is available for customers in the United States and Canada who do not have a business Tax ID. A Tax ID in this case would be a U.S. EIN or a Canadian Business Number, which you would use to file Federal U.S. or Canadian income tax as a corporate entity. If you are registering on behalf of a business and DO have a Tax ID, or if you are registering for a business located outside of the United States or Canada, you must register for a Standard or Low-Volume Standard Brand rather than a Sole Proprietor Brand.
If you are an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and want to register your customers for A2P as Sole Proprietors, see this overview.
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Not sure if you are an ISV? See this support article to understand what an ISV is.
NOTE: Are you seeking to register your Brand solely in the service of an OTP (One-Time Password) use case, or any other type of 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) use case? If so, you should investigate Twilio's Verify service to see if this is a better option for you. With Verify you do not need to worry about A2P registration (Brand or Campaign) or any other aspect of sender provisioning.
You will complete A2P 10DLC registration in the Twilio Console. The process involves the following steps:
- Create a Twilio Starter Profile (Messaging > Regulatory Compliance)
- Register a US A2P Sole Proprietor Brand
- A Brand verifies who you are with US carriers
- Register a new Campaign and link to a Messaging Service with your 10DLC phone number
- A Campaign describes the messages you will be sending to users and how they can opt in or out of these messages
- Once you create a campaign, you will attach the campaign to a Messaging Service. Sole Proprietor Campaigns can only have one 10DLC phone number attached to them.
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Note: For all information entered as part of this registration process, please note that The Campaign Registry (TCR) supports all "utf8mb4" supported characters. Please see the list for all Unicode 15.0 supported scripts and characters here: https://www.unicode.org/charts/
The first step is to create your Twilio Starter Profile, which can then be used to register as a Sole Proprietor. This step validates your identity with Twilio before you register for A2P 10DLC. You will only need to do this once.
Navigate to the Twilio Console → Messaging → Regulatory Compliance → Onboarding page: