A DBA used publicly must be registered on the brand

The requirementstatement

Any trading name the business uses publicly — on its site or in its messages — must be declared in the DBA field rather than substituted silently.

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.dba vs website and message content
Where it liveslayer: BrandBRAND
How Ekas settles itdetectability: AI · crawlCRAWLExternal recordEXTERNAL_DATA; Needs your live site or policy page fetched and read. Ekas crawls it the way a reviewer would. The fact that settles it lives in a register we cannot query, such as the IRS file, a postal database, or another provider’s tenant. Reported as a warning with the evidence to check, not as a pass.
What the fix involvesfailureClass: Fix the fieldRETRY_FIELD; A better value in the form fixes it. Ekas can rewrite it and re-check.
Who requires itauthorities: Twilio
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

The consumer's only handle on who is texting them is the name in the message, so a name that appears there and nowhere in the registration breaks the identification the whole framework rests on. It is rarely deliberate: the messaging programme gets its own friendly name, the registration was filled in months earlier, and nobody connects the two.

How to fix itremediation

Add the public trading name to the brand's DBA field. Where more than one name is used publicly, register the one that appears in the messages — that is the one a recipient will try to match. Done when the name a customer sees in a text can be found on the brand record.

A compliant exampleexample

dba: Acme Coffee — where the site header, the samples and the HELP reply all say "Acme Coffee" but the legal name is Acme Coffee Co, LLC

Provider rejection codescodes

The code you get back when this rule is what failed, and whether that provider lets you resubmit.

Provider	Code	Resubmit
Twilio	30918	Yes

Check this yourselfattestation

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

Is every trading name you use publicly — in messages, on the site — registered where your state requires a DBA to be filed?

1List the names a customer could see: the sender name in your texts, the name on the website header, the name on receipts.
2For each, confirm it is either the legal name or a DBA filed with the state or county that requires it.
3Put the name that appears in the messages in the brand's DBA field — that is the one a recipient will try to match.

What wrong looks like: The messaging programme was given a friendly name of its own. A reviewer looks the name up, finds no filing behind it, and treats it as invented.

Notesnotes

Whether a DBA is REGISTERED with the state is EXTERNAL_DATA and out of reach; what we can see is whether a publicly used name was declared to us. The user has to confirm separately that any DBA they rely on is properly filed where their state requires it, because a reviewer who looks it up and finds nothing treats the name as invented.

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-147 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.