Resources · Guide
The venue owner's guide to A2P, the texting paperwork nobody warns you about.
If a business number texts customers in the US, carriers require it to be registered. It's called A2P 10DLC, most software leaves you to figure it out alone, and unregistered numbers get their messages silently filtered or blocked. Here's the whole thing, in plain English, whether you use KAIBA or not.
What it is
Carriers stopped trusting business numbers by default.
A2P means “application to person”: any text sent by software rather than a human thumb, which includes an AI agent confirming a tour. To fight spam, US carriers now require every business sending A2P texts over a regular 10-digit local number (the “10DLC” part) to register two things: a brand (who you are, verified against your EIN) and a campaign (what the number sends and how people opted in). Unregistered traffic doesn't bounce with an error; it quietly disappears. Venues usually discover this weeks later, wondering why nobody replies.
What you'll be asked for
Four things. Get them right the first time.
Your business identity
Legal business name exactly as registered, EIN, business address, and website. The #1 rejection reason is a name/EIN mismatch: if your LLC is "1712 Ventures LLC" doing business as "1712 Studios," the registration must use the LLC name. Check your EIN letter, not your Instagram bio.
A use-case description
Carriers want to know what the number will send. For a venue this is simple and low-risk: replying to inbound booking inquiries, tour confirmations, and follow-ups people asked for. Conversational replies to customers are the easiest category to get approved.
Sample messages
Two or three examples of real texts the number will send, like a tour confirmation with date and time. They should match the use case you described. Generic marketing blasts here will slow you down or sink you.
Opt-in and opt-out story
How does a person end up receiving your texts, and how do they stop? For a venue: they texted you first or gave their number on an inquiry form (opt-in), and replying STOP always works (opt-out). Your website needs an SMS terms page and a privacy policy that say so; registrations get rejected for missing them.
Timeline and cost
Usually a few days. Occasionally longer.
Brand verification is typically fast when your EIN and legal name match. Campaign review is the slow part: usually a few business days, sometimes a couple of weeks if anything needs a second look. The fees themselves are small (one-time registration plus a few dollars a month in carrier fees), and the meaningful cost is the back-and-forth when a submission bounces. File it clean once and it's done; a registration doesn't expire month to month.
One practical note: you don't have to wait on it to get value. Web chat and Instagram DMs have no carrier registration at all, which is why KAIBA turns those on instantly and files your texting registration in the background.
If you'd rather not do any of this
One form. We file the rest.
KAIBA asks for your business details once, builds the use case and sample messages from what your agent actually sends, hosts the SMS terms and privacy pages carriers check for, and submits the whole registration for you. You pick a number local to your venue; approval lands in a few days; the fees are inside your plan. It's a line item on how it works, not a project.