Registering Your MSP

To provide your Message Service Provider (MSP) services you need to register for Apple Messages for Business on the Apple Business Register portal.

Organization

Apple Messages for Business accounts require actions from an administrator, a technical contact, and a sponsoring executive. The administrator uses Apple Business Register to register the organization and approve the TOU on behalf of the sponsoring executive. The technical contact can set up Apple Messages for Business Accounts, MSPs, and brands. The technical contact must be an alias email, such as @<yourdomain.com>. The sponsoring executive agrees to the TOU. You should have these program contact roles identified prior to registration.

You must enter your MSP, Apple Messages for Business accounts, brands, team members, and organization details into Apple Business Register to create the accounts needed to connect your platform to Apple Messages for Business.

Apple Business Register is designed as a self-service portal. It is mostly self-explanatory with a few key items of note:

  • You have to apply and be approved for your company to offer MSP services on behalf of Apple. If you don't see Messaging Service Providers as an item in Apple Business Register, contact your Apple Messages for Business account manager to determine the status of your application.
  • Apple Business Register generates several values: MSP ID, Business ID, and secret passphrase.
  • In Apple Business Register, you have to define additional attributes, such as organizational details, team member details, brand colors, brand logos, and URLs of your servers.
  • Each Business ID is associated with a unique MSP ID. Internal test Business IDs have no brand. Commercial Business IDs must be associated with a brand in Apple Business Register, which requires an approval step by the brand review team that may take several business days.

Branding

During registration, please register your brand name, making sure it matches your online or physical identity. For example, the details registered for your website match your company's website.

Use your product name or the main product that supports Apple Messages for Business. For example, if the product has a dedicated name and website, you may want to register the product as the brand you want to promote for your platform name. This is how businesses will find you in Apple Business Register, and connect their accounts to your service.

Account Types

There are three registration account types available to MSPs: Private, Commercial Public, and Commercial Non-Public.

Private. Intended for development, testing, staging, and integration work endpoints.
Commercial Public. Indicates an MSP endpoint for paid commercial use as a service offering of the MSP. This service appears in the drop-down list of MSPs available to new business customers.
Commercial Non-Public. An alternative to Commercial Public. It is intended as a commercial messaging service, but doesn’t appear in the drop-down list of services. Use this type for alternative endpoints such as geo-specific endpoint, such as EMEA- or APAC-specific geo-locations. Businesses will need to connect their accounts to these alternate endpoints manually.

Private MSP Accounts

Private MSP accounts allow you to associate your platform with our Messaging gateway and establishes a communication channel to start sending and receiving messages with an Apple device.

Add at least one MSP Private account to your Apple Business Register portal to begin developing and testing. In Apple Business Register, go to the Messaging Service Providers section and press the + button to create a private account. Once created, the account isn't accessable to the general public.

“Connected

Configure the following values for your account:

MSP ID. A unique UUID for your approved MSP account.
Business ID. A unique UUID for your approved Apple Messages for Business account.
Secret passphrase for API. A Base64-encoded string.
MSP message endpoint. Use https://<your.endpoint.host>/message.

When you create your MSP private endpoint, your screen changes to list an additional link (see screenshot below). Click on Get your test Messages for Business URL to get a test version of your Messages for Business ID and URL. You can use these links for testing purposes only, but not for development.

Test IDs

Private Apple Messages for Business Accounts

To fully set up Apple Messages for Business integration, go back to the main Register page dashboard and click on Messages for Business Accounts to create your Private accounts. You can create multiple private account.
Each of them can be configured to a specific MSP account.

Sending messages to Private accounts requires you to register the Tester's Apple IDs. Use the email address from their device which you can find under Setting > Messages > Send & Receive. For more information, see Messaging for Approved Testers

With the Private account, you can create Apple Messages for Business accounts for testing and development purposes. Each of them can be configured to a specific endpoint. You’ll need an account to set up and integrate OAuth2, see Sending an Authentication Message, and Apple Pay, see Integrating Apple Pay.

NOTE Apple Messages for Business accounts created for testing and development have no branding to identify them as private.

Test message

MSP Commercial Public Apple Messages for Business Account

Once you have completed integrating Apple Messages for Business features on your platform, you’re eligible to add a commercial public Apple Messages for Business account and assign your business branding. This allows your customers to engage with you via Apple Messages, as they would with any other business.