What are alphanumeric Sender IDs?
Alphanumeric Sender Identification Codes, or Sender IDs, are custom identifiers used in global messaging to personalize the sender name. This allows businesses to display their brand name, product name, or another desired customization to recipients instead of a mobile number.
Benefits of alphanumeric Sender IDs
Using alphanumeric Sender IDs offers a couple of advantages:
It creates a branded experience for recipients, making the message more recognizable and increasing open and conversion rates.
It allows businesses to establish a more personal connection with their customers, as recipients can quickly identify the incoming message as being from a known and trusted source.
Alphanumeric Sender IDs are also a good choice for one-way outbound global messaging use cases, such as one-time passwords and account notifications, confirmations, or delivery alerts of any kind.
Restrictions and requirements for alphanumeric Sender IDs
When using alphanumeric Sender IDs, it’s important to be aware of the restrictions and requirements that may apply. These vary depending on the country, rules and regulations set by local authorities, or the standard imposed by local mobile network operators or the industry as a whole. Here are some key points to consider:
Country-specific support: Alphanumeric Sender IDs are not available everywhere. Many important markets, such as the US, Canada, and China (to name a few), don't support alphanumeric Sender IDs. However, they’re supported in many countries in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific.
Registration requirements: Many countries require only KYC verification, whereas others also require pre-registration of alphanumeric Sender IDs and the submission of SMS templates or content. Failure to register Sender IDs in these countries would result in message delivery issues. If you’d like more information on which countries require additional registration, please see our Global Messaging Carrier Reach Matrix. Further down in this article, you’ll also find instructions on how to submit details for KYC verification as well as pre-registration of alphanumeric Sender IDs.
Formatting restrictions: Alphanumeric Sender IDs must contain at least one letter. Although some countries and mobile network carriers may impose minimum length restrictions or modifications to alphanumeric Sender IDs, standard alphanumeric Sender IDs can contain up to 11 characters, including:
Upper-case letters (A-Z)
Lower-case letters (a-z)
Numbers (0-9)
Space
Hyphen (-)
Plus sign (+)
Underscore (_)
Ampersand (&)
Opt-out/unsubscribe instructions: To ensure compliance with marketing and advertising guidelines, especially for promotional use cases, remember that you may need to include opt-out or unsubscribe instructions in the message body when using alphanumeric Sender IDs.
Sender ID definitions
Sender ID: A combination of alphanumeric characters identifying a Brand Owner’s company name, brands, services, or products that serve as the outgoing messaging sender identifier.
Customer: Any company engaged in a commercial relationship with Bandwidth and receiving 1-way messaging services utilizing Sender IDs.
Brand Owner: The company that owns a brand, product, or service that is utilized as a Sender ID, and is the company that will be subject to the Sender ID validation process explained below.
End User: The sender party (A-party) of an SMS using the Sender ID(s). Please note that the End User may not always be the Brand Owner associated with the Sender ID.
KYC: Short for Know-Your-Customer, it refers to a set of processes and procedures that companies, including telecommunication providers, undertake to verify the identities of their customers and mitigate the risks of identity fraud or brand misrepresentation. More information on KYC can be found in this article.
How to register alphanumeric Sender IDs
The following steps will guide you through the process of initiating and completing the Sender ID registration form:
Log in to the Bandwidth Support Center.
In the top-right corner, click Tickets and select Create a Ticket.
Under What do you need help with today?, select International Compliance.
Under Subject, enter Sender ID Registration [Insert Country].
Under Description of Issue or Concern, provide a short description of the service needed.
Under Ticket Type, select Sender ID Registration.
Enter the Bandwidth Customer’s Username/Account Name and provide the Sender ID(s).
Enter the Brand Owner’s Name, Brand Owner’s Website, and Address Details.
Under Destination Country/Countries, select the country/countries you plan to target with SMS using the above Sender ID(s). If the initial list changes, please inform Bandwidth as soon as possible since it will have an impact on the requirements and your ability to send messages to those destinations.
Explain your Messaging Use Case.
Specify your Type of Traffic (Promotional, Transactional, or both), Origin Type (Local or International), and Type of Business.
Provide a Sample SMS Message and specify the Average SMS Message Volume per Month.
Confirm the accuracy of the provided information by selecting Yes under each of the following statements.
Under Attachments, attach a copy of the business registration and/or other relevant documents, and click Submit.
Note: Validation of Sender IDs requires a copy of the business registration document of the Brand Owner issued within the past 12 months or an equivalent government-issued document such as a certificate of incorporation in the US.
What happens afterward?
Your submission will be reviewed for validation. In the process of validating your chosen Sender ID, we must be able to establish a clear link between the selected Sender ID(s) and the legal or commercial name of the Brand Owner, its brands, services, or products.
If the form validation and KYC review is successful, the next step will vary depending on the specified destination countries, as some have additional in-country requirements:
In the event of successful validation with in-country requirements for Sender IDs, the Bandwidth Compliance Team will contact you with a request for further information and/or documentation, depending on the market.
In the event of successful validation without in-country requirements for Sender IDs, you’re finished with the process, and services will be enabled once details are sent to our supplier. The Bandwidth Compliance Team will contact you and confirm once this is complete.
If the form validation is unsuccessful, it will be returned to you for review and correction.
What's the typical Sender ID registration timeline?
This depends on the country and the timelines maintained by third parties Bandwidth relies on and engages for the services. Some are a few business days, some are weeks, and others are about a month.
What's stopping me from registering as "McDonald's" if I'm not McDonald’s?
For major corporations such as Facebook or Apple, traffic is automatically restricted. To authorize or allow traffic from these senders, a Letter of Authorization (LOA) from the end client, granting Bandwidth permission to send traffic using the specified Sender ID, is mandatory.