A2P 10DLC Brand Approval Best Practices

When you register your A2P Brand with your Business Profile, LC Phone will submit your business information to The Campaign Registry for review, determining your eligibility and throughput for your messaging Campaigns. This article summarizes how Brand approval works and our best practices to ensure your Brand is approved.

Covered in this Article:

How Brand Approval Works

Guidance for companies in Canada

Guidance for companies in the rest of the world

Common customer errors for EIN/Tax ID

Check Your Business Address

Frequently Asked Questions

How Brand Approval Works

The approval process starts with a primary vetting of your brand completed by The Campaign Registry. As part of the approval process, LC Phone will automatically submit your brand for Secondary Vetting, an additional review process that can lead to increased throughput and messaging limits. Once that vetting is completed, you will receive a Trust Score that determines your long code messaging throughput to US networks and daily message limits to T-Mobile as described in Message throughput MPS and Trust Scores for A2P 10DLC in the US. For a full walkthrough of the Brand registration process, please see our A2P 10DLC Onboarding Guide. 

How To Maximize Your Trust Score

To ensure your Brand is approved and you receive the most accurate Trust Score, you must submit your business data properly. Below are some best practices to follow, along with frequently asked questions regarding Brand registration.

Use a valid EIN for US-based companies – not a DUNS number

The provided EIN and Legal Company Name must match business registration sources for private and public for-profit companies. Please ensure: 

• For Standard A2P 10DLC brand registration, customers with a US presence must use an EIN.
• A DUNS number is unacceptable for US companies creating Standard A2P Brand registrations. A DUNS number should only be used in Business Profile creation if you do not want to use US A2P messaging and only want to use Stir/Shaken for Voice.
• For Non-Profit and Political Organizations, the EIN has to match the Legal Company Name available in the Tax-Exempt Organizations or Registered Political Organizations list. Learn more in Nonprofit and Government Guide to A2P 10DLC Text Messaging.
  

How to find your EIN (for US companies)

• If your company is publicly traded and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), you can use the SEC's EDGAR system for free to look up your EIN.
• Contact your company's accountant or financing office and ask for the EIN.
• Find your company’s W2 form or any local or federal tax filings that may be online.
  
  

Use a Valid Tax ID for companies based outside of the U.S.

The provided EIN and Legal Company Name has to match registration sources for private and public profit companies. Please ensure:

• ALL customers creating a Business Profile must provide a valid Tax ID. 
• A Tax ID from their country is required for Standard A2P 10DLC brand registration or customers with an International presence.
• For Businesses outside US /Canada there may be a requirement for additional vetting to verify their brand successfully. 
• In such cases, they will no longer be able to register as Low volume standards.

Guidance for companies in Canada

Please Note:

On July 27th, for companies in Canada, we will switch to ONLY accepting the Business Number (BN) rather than the Corporation/Incorporation/Registry ID numbers for Canadian Brand Registration. Until that time we will continue to ONLY accept the Corporation/Incorporation/Registry ID numbers.

We will only accept the first 9 numeric digits of the BN (BN-9). Here is an example of the format of a BN where the bolded part is the part we will collect in the Canadian Brand.

Tax/Corporation ID field: 123456789RT0001

Enter your Provincial Corporation Number as your Business Registration Number.

For example:

• Alberta Corporation Number
• Ontario Corporation Number (make sure you enter only the numbers after the first two leading zeros)
• British Columbia Corporation Number (make sure the BC prefix is part of the number)
• Saskatchewan Corporation Number
• Nova Scotia Corporation Number
• Quebec Corporation Number
• Manitoba Corporation Number

If this does not work for you, alternatively, you may use your federally-issued Canada Corporation Number.

Until July 27th, please do NOT enter your business number or federal tax ID number, as that is not readily cross-referenced. Please ensure your legal company name is properly spelled and consistent with your corporation registration. The address you enter should also match the address you registered with Corporations Canada.

Guidance for companies in the rest of the world

• European companies should use the VIES VAT number validation lookup to look up their brand information before submission.
• Companies in Australia should use their Australian Business Number (ABN) and use the official ABN Lookup tool to look up the information.
• Companies in New Zealand should use New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) and use the official NZBN lookup tool to look up the information.
• Companies in Hong Kong should use your Companies Registry (CN) number. You can use the official CN lookup tool to find it.
• For other countries, please enter the numeric portion of your VAT ID number. If you don't have a VAT ID, please provide your country's primary corporation registration number or tax ID number.

Common customer errors for EIN/Tax ID

• It is using an incorrect business name, such as the name of the messaging provider, DBA, or the trade name of the company instead of the official legally registered name. The Legal Name must not be abbreviated and must appear exactly as it is filed with the IRS (US) or the equivalent tax authority in other countries.
• It is entering a number in the EIN or Tax ID field that is invalid for the EIN or home country company ID number.
• We provide a DUNS number instead of an EIN for a US-based company.
• You are using SSN to register your brand. If you used your SSN to file your taxes, you are a sole proprietor and should await further guidance from LC Phone on registering your brand.
  
  

Further recommendations:

• For US businesses, to ensure you’re providing accurate information, enter your business's EIN into the HIPAA Space lookup website. If your business appears in the results, please fill in your name according to the business listing information.
• If you are an ISV-type customer and need to validate and enter information for multiple brands in the US, you could use the subscription-based EIN verification service provided by TINCheck.
• For validating a brand’s status as a nonprofit, you can use Results for Tax Exempt Organization Search from the US IRS.
• a Newly issued EINs or equivalent tax ID won’t propagate across the relevant databases validation systems for a few weeks. So, if your brand registration failed due to tax ID mismatch and you recently registered your business for a tax ID, please share documentation with support to help your brand get verified manually by the third-party vendors. Any such documentation must be from the federal level, not the state level.

Check Your Business Address

For all entity types, a mismatch in one of the following might produce a lower Trust Score:

• Address/Street line
• City
• State
• Postal Code/Zip Code
• Country

Please note

Submitting the address of a local branch or any address different from the official registered company address might produce a mismatch with a negative impact on the Trust Score. 

Supported Stock Exchanges

For Public Profit companies, the stock ticker symbol and the designated stock exchange must match available sources. Available Stock Ticker values are as follows:

• NONE
• NASDAQ
• NYSE
• AMEX
• AMX
• ASX
• B3
• BME
• BSE
• FRA
• ICEX
• JPX
• JSE
• KRX
• LON
• NSE
• OMX
• SEHK
• SGX
• SSE
• STO
• SWX
• SZSE
• TSX
• TWSE
• VSE
• OTHER

Other Factors

The following factors will impact the Trust Score but cannot be influenced by data submitted:

• Company size: For all companies, points are earned for the detected size of the company based on independent sources of employee count and revenue.
• Years in operation: All companies earn points for their years in operation and domain age.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an EIN mandatory and what do businesses outside the US use for Standard Barnd Registration?

EIN is required and mandatory for A2P standard brand registration for US entities. DUNS will result in an error and puts the brand in an Unverified state preventing customers from proceeding with the next steps. DUNS is not an acceptable format for A2P brand registration.

the If you are a business outside of US then for Standard Registration you can use your business country Tax ID like BN9 for Canada, Company Number for the UK, Company Number from ASIC(ACN) for AUS, etc], 

I received an error stating “We are unable to retrieve your TCR Trust Score” What does that mean?

During Brand approval, the vetting process is automated, however our vendor Aegis is going through some vetting issues, due to which there is a delay in populating the Secondary Vetting score. If we cannot retrieve your TCR Trust Score during Brand registration, it means that it’s undergoing this review which can take up to 7 business days. If your Brand is not approved after that time, please contact Support. 

I received an error message stating, “Your brand registration failed” what does that mean?

If you receive any error messages stating your brand registration has failed, please follow the instructions provided to resolve your brand information. Your brand registration information is vetted by TCR, and if the vetting rejects your brand information, you will get this error. Some reasons for failure of registration are:

1. The business registration number (e.g., EIN or Tax ID) does not match your legal name. You need to update one or both fields to resolve such an error.
2. The stock symbol or ticker you provided does not match your brand information. You need to update one or both fields to resolve such an error.
3. The organization could not be verified as a US-registered non-profit organization or government entity. To resolve such an error, you need to update your entity type (a.k.a company type) or provide documents for manual verification of your entity type. For more, see Nonprofit and Government Guide to A2P 10DLC. 

I received a low Trust Score; how can I increase the score?

The best way to improve your Trust Score is to ensure you have followed the above best practices including using a valid EIN and are using an accurate Business Address. If you have followed the guidelines and are still seeing a low Trust Score, don't hesitate to get in touch with Support. Please note that a Trust Score is calculated based on your brand footprint. 

Another company acquired my company; whose information do I provide?

The guidance is always to provide the same business information you would use for your tax reporting at that given time. 

My company’s business information has changed; how can I update my A2P Brand? 

Your registered business information must stay accurate and up to date for your Brand.  Once your Brand and Business Profile are approved, you cannot make changes to them through the Console or API, so if you need to update any information in your Brand/Business Profile, please contact Support with the necessary changes.