Register the message sender, not the agency or platform

The requirementstatement

The brand must be the legal entity whose messages are sent — never the agency, ISV, reseller, or software platform acting on its behalf.

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.company_name
Where it liveslayer: BrandBRAND
How Ekas settles itdetectability: Human checkHUMANAI · formAI_FORM; Only someone holding the document or making the call can settle it. Ekas tells you exactly what to look at. A semantic question about what you wrote: whether a description matches a use case, whether a name looks like a filed entity. Judged by a model against written criteria.
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: TCRTwilioTelnyxBandwidthAWST-MobileCTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

Consent runs to a specific sender, so the brand on the registration must be the business the consumer agreed to hear from. Registering the agency or platform instead breaks that chain and is the highest-frequency brand rejection in the corpus — 10 separate sources across 11 authorities call it out.

How to fix itremediation

Register the brand under the legal entity that owns the customer relationship and whose name appears in the messages. If you are an agency or platform registering on behalf of a client, the client is the brand — register them, with their EIN and their website, and add yourself as the CSP rather than the brand.

A compliant exampleexample

Brand: Acme Coffee Co, LLC (the business texting its own customers) — not "Northstar Marketing Group" (the agency running the campaign).

Check this yourselfattestation

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

Is the legal entity on this brand the business whose name appears in the messages, rather than the agency or platform that sends them?

1Read one of your sample messages as a recipient would, and note which business it says is texting.
2Compare that business against the legal name and EIN on the brand. They must be the same entity.
3If you are an agency, ISV or reseller, your client is the brand and you are the CSP — register them, not yourself.

What wrong looks like: The brand says Northstar Platform, Inc. and the message says "Acme Coffee: your order is ready". The consumer consented to hear from Acme, so Acme is the brand and Northstar is not.

Notesnotes

Highest-frequency brand rejection in the corpus (10 source rows, 11 authorities). A tool that fills the form from whatever website it was pointed at can actively induce this failure.

Rules you will hit next

6 other rules read brand.company_name. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

BRD-001A legal company name is required for every entity but a sole proprietorBlockingBLOCKING BRD-003Legal name must carry its exact entity suffix as filedBlockingBLOCKING BRD-008Legal name must not carry an appended personal name or roleBlockingBLOCKING BRD-011A legal business name may back only one brand across the whole registryBlockingBLOCKING BRD-068Sole proprietor brand name must be a person, not a companyBlockingBLOCKING BRD-006Submit every name line above the address on a multi-line IRS recordHighHIGH

All brand rules

BRD-160 is one of 196 brand rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.