WhatsApp Catalog and Product Messages: How to Sell Products Inside the Chat

A WhatsApp catalog is your product list inside WhatsApp. Customers can browse it, add items to a cart and send you an order in the same chat where they asked the question. For a business that sells products, it removes the step where a customer has to leave the conversation to find a link, a price list or a PDF.

This guide explains the message types you can send from a catalog, what Meta requires before they work, how they differ from carousels, and how orders reach your team.

What a WhatsApp catalog is

The catalog is not a WhatsApp feature you fill in by hand inside the app. On the WhatsApp Business Platform it is a Meta catalog, created in Meta Commerce Manager or uploaded through the Commerce API, and then connected to your WhatsApp Business Account. Each item needs details such as a name, description, price, images and availability.

Meta also asks you to configure commerce settings for your business phone number, including whether the cart works and whether the catalog is visible. If the catalog is not connected, none of the product messages below will work.

The four ways to show products

Meta’s guide to sharing products lists these message types:

Message type	What the customer sees	Template needed?
Single-product message	One product with its image, title and price	No, inside an existing chat
Multi-product message	Up to 30 products, grouped in sections	No, inside an existing chat
Catalog message	A thumbnail that opens your full catalog	No, inside an existing chat
Catalog link	A wa.me link to your catalog, sent as plain text	No

For the first three, Meta states that interactive messages need no template or pre-approval, but that they can only be sent as part of an existing chat thread. They are replies, not notifications.

The limits that matter in practice:

• A multi-product message holds up to 30 products and must have at least one section.
• Body text is limited to 1,024 characters and the footer to 60.
• If some product IDs do not match your catalog, Meta drops those and still sends the message when at least one item matches.
• In a cart, a customer can add up to 99 units of each catalog item.

Catalog templates for starting the conversation

When the customer has not written to you recently, you cannot send a free-form product message. You need a template instead. Meta’s guide names a catalog template and a multi-product template, which shows up to 30 products in up to 10 sections. Product carousel templates show products as scrollable cards, and a carousel needs 2 to 10 of them.

These are marketing templates, so each delivered message is charged at your market’s marketing rate, and the customer must have opted in. The product itself is not fixed in the template: you choose it each time you send, which lets one approved template carry this week’s products. Read how to create a WhatsApp template for approval tips, and WhatsApp opt-in for the consent you need first.

Product messages or carousels?

Both show several products, and both are useful. The difference is where the content comes from:

• Product messages read straight from your Meta catalog. Prices and availability stay in one place, and the customer can open an item and add it to a cart.
• Media carousels are cards you design: an image or video, a short text of up to 160 characters and up to two buttons. They suit packages, rooms or offers that are not catalog items.

If your products already live in a Meta catalog, product messages avoid keeping a second list. The interactive messages guide compares them with buttons, lists and Flows.

How orders and payment work

When a customer sends their cart, you receive it as an order message listing the items, quantities and prices. Payment is a separate step. Most businesses answer the order with a payment link from their own payment provider, then confirm the payment and send a receipt in the same chat. Accepting payments in WhatsApp chats walks through that part.

How to sell from the WhatsApp catalog with MonoChat

MonoChat connects your WhatsApp Business Account directly to Meta, and the catalog you connected there is the one your templates use. What MonoChat adds:

• Catalog templates in the template builder. The builder has Catalog, Multi-product, Single product and Product carousel types. You write the message and the button text; the products are chosen each time you send the template. See WhatsApp template messages.
• Orders you can read. WhatsApp order messages show the items, quantities, prices and total in the conversation, so an agent sees what the customer wants without decoding it.
• Payment links in the same chat. MonoChat’s payment integrations create the link from an automation or an agent’s reply, so the order and the payment stay in one thread. See payment integrations.
• Automations around the order. Workflow automation can route the order to the right team, tag the customer and send the confirmation.
• One inbox. The order, the questions before it and the payment all land in the shared team inbox.

You can start on the free Basic plan at app.monochat.ai and compare plans on the pricing page. Meta bills message fees directly, with no MonoChat markup.

A checklist before you launch

1. Create the catalog and fill in name, price, image and availability for every item.
2. Connect it to your WhatsApp Business Account and turn on the cart and catalog visibility for your number.
3. Test a single-product and a multi-product message in a chat you started yourself.
4. Submit a catalog or multi-product template for new-collection announcements, only to customers who opted in.
5. Decide how an order turns into a payment link, and who answers when an item is out of stock.

Sources

• Meta for Developers: Share products with WhatsApp users (opened 27 Oct 2026)
• Meta for Developers: Sell products and services (opened 27 Oct 2026)
• Meta for Developers: WhatsApp Business Platform pricing (opened 27 Oct 2026)
• MonoChat help center: Template messages
• MonoChat changelog v3.8.36