Some providers require an external vet for every non-US brand

The requirementstatement

At least one provider requires external vetting on every non-US customer before the brand can be used.

Severityseverity: BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
When it bitesphase: Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
What is checkedobject: brand.country + external vet record
Where it liveslayer: BrandBRAND
How Ekas settles itdetectability: DeterministicDETERMINISTIC; Settled in code from the values you submitted. No model involved, no judgement call, same answer every time.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Wait on someone elseTERMINAL_EXTERNAL; Needs an external system or a waiting period, such as IRS propagation, a vetting result, or a carrier queue.
Who requires itauthorities: Vonage
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

Where this applies it is a precondition rather than a remedy: the brand does not proceed at all until the vet is bought, so discovering it after the customer's data is collected wastes the submission and the fee for the class of vet that was ordered first. It is easy to miss because the requirement sits in the provider's onboarding terms rather than in any field validation.

How to fix itremediation

Order the external vet before submitting the brand, and budget its fee into the customer's onboarding. Done when a completed vet is attached to a non-US brand on a provider that requires one.

Check this yourselfattestation

Ekas flags this from what you submit, but the fact that settles it sits somewhere only you can reach.

Have you checked your provider's onboarding terms for a mandatory external vet on non-US customers, and budgeted its fee?

1Read the provider's onboarding or acceptable-use terms rather than the API reference — the requirement lives there and produces no field validation error.
2Where it applies, order the vet before submitting the brand, and price it into the customer's onboarding.

What wrong looks like: The brand is submitted, the fee for the wrong class of vet is spent first, and the requirement surfaces only as a support answer after the customer's data is already collected.

Notesnotes

Conditional on the submission target — Vonage states it explicitly for every non-US customer — and NOT tagged with `providers`, because the tag budget is spent on genuine baseline divergences and this one is checkable from the target we already hold. The condition lives in the check, which passes immediately for a US brand and reports UNCLEAR when the target is unknown. What the user must confirm themselves is whether their own provider imposes the same precondition: it is in the onboarding terms, not in any API error.

Rules you will hit next

Other brand rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.

BRD-001A legal company name is required for every entity but a sole proprietorBlockingBLOCKING BRD-002Legal name must match the IRS record for the EINBlockingBLOCKING BRD-003Legal name must carry its exact entity suffix as filedBlockingBLOCKING BRD-008Legal name must not carry an appended personal name or roleBlockingBLOCKING BRD-009The legal name field takes the legal name, not the trading nameBlockingBLOCKING BRD-011A legal business name may back only one brand across the whole registryBlockingBLOCKING

All brand rules

BRD-038 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.