Guide · Inside the chat · For the owner who sends people to customers
Asking a WhatsApp customer where they are: Meta's location request message, what your system receives, and the address form Meta offers in India only
Every delivery, pickup and home visit starts with the same exchange: where are you, near which landmark, which gate. Customers type a street name that the map does not know, or send a voice note describing a turning. Meta's platform has a message built for this moment. It carries a short text and one button; the customer taps it, WhatsApp opens its own map, and the pin they drop arrives in your system as coordinates. Here is what Meta's page says the message does, what you receive, what you do not, and the fuller address form Meta offers in one country only.
Published 2 October 2026
What the customer sees, and what you get back
- The message
- Your text, up to 1,024 characters and allowed to contain a link, with a single send location button under it. Meta's own example is a pickup prompt that offers the customer the choice of typing an address or sharing where they are.
- The tap
- The button opens WhatsApp's standard location sharing screen, the same one a customer uses to send a friend a pin. Nothing is installed and no website opens. The customer can move the pin before sending, or decline and simply type instead.
- What arrives
- A notice to your system with the latitude and longitude in decimal degrees, a time stamp, the customer's name as set on their WhatsApp, and the identifier of your message they were answering, so a system handling several open requests can match the pin to the right order. A place name and a street address are included only if the customer chose to share them.
What you do not get
Where it fits in a working day
- At order time, not dispatch time. The message is an ordinary reply inside the conversation, so it is sent while the customer is talking to you, which is explained in the 24-hour window guide. Ask for the pin when the order is placed, while the customer has the chat open, rather than when the rider is already outside.
- Coordinates beat addresses in cities without reliable street numbering. A pin resolves to a point on a map regardless of how the customer would spell the street. The address text, when the customer includes it, is a bonus for the invoice, not the thing the driver navigates by.
- Pair it with the quick questions. A pin says where; it does not say which floor or which gate. The same conversation can carry a reply-button message asking for those, or a short form of the kind described in the Flows guide.
- Treat the pin as personal data. A home location is among the more sensitive things a customer can hand over. Keep it for the job it was given for and no longer, a point that sits alongside the rest of the privacy guide.
The fuller form Meta offers in India only
Meta's address messages page describes a second, richer tool: a proper address form inside WhatsApp with named fields for name, phone number, pin code, flat or house number, floor, tower, building, address, landmark, city and state. A business can prefill fields, offer the customer addresses they saved before, and reject a submission with an error on the field that is wrong until it is fixed. It is a well-designed thing, and Meta's page opens by saying it is available only to businesses based in India and their customers in India; the request is refused if the customer's number does not carry the matching country code. For a business in the Gulf or Pakistan it is not on offer, and the location request plus a short form is the way to collect the same information.
Questions
Can we send the location request to a customer who has not messaged us?
Not as described on Meta's page. It is an interactive reply sent inside the conversation, like reply buttons. To start a conversation you need an approved template; once the customer answers, the request can follow.
Will we see the customer's location after they share it once?
No. Meta's page describes one shared position per tap: latitude, longitude, and the name and address only if the customer included them. There is no continuing or background location.
Can the customer type an address instead of tapping the button?
Yes. The button is an offer, not a requirement; the customer can reply with text as usual. Meta's own example text invites either, and a good system should accept both.
Why can our provider not give us the address form with named fields?
Because Meta's address messages page limits it to businesses based in India messaging customers in India, and refuses it when the customer's number does not match. Elsewhere the location request, reply buttons and Flows cover the same ground.
Sources
- Meta's developer documentation: Location request messages, read 2 October 2026.
- Meta's developer documentation: Address messages, read 2 October 2026.
More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.
Tired of drivers calling to ask where the customer is?
We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a proper system that asks for the customer's pin at order time with Meta's location request, collects the floor and gate with a reply button or a short form, hands the coordinates to whoever is on the way, and keeps the location only as long as the job needs it. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.
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