An abandoned-cart message must not complete the purchase in the thread

The requirementstatement

A cart reminder must not collect payment information, accept purchase approval by keyword reply, or otherwise complete the transaction — the recipient must finish the purchase through a direct URL.

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: cart-reminder message body
Where it liveslayer: Message contentMESSAGE_CONTENT
How Ekas settles itdetectability: AI · formAI_FORM; 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: T-MobileCTIA
When it appliesapplicabilityText: Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

A purchase confirmed by replying Y is a charge authorised by a single character, sent from a device somebody else may be holding, with no price, no total and no terms on screen at the moment of authorisation. T-Mobile and CTIA both refuse it, and the harm is not hypothetical: the dispute rate on keyword-confirmed purchases is what put the rule in the handbook. Merchants build it because it converts, and because the platform offering the feature does not mention that carriers refuse the campaign that uses it.

How to fix itremediation

Replace the keyword purchase step with a direct link to the checkout page for that basket, and take every request for card, billing or address detail out of the message body. Done when the only thing a reply can do is stop the messages, and every purchase completes on your own site with the total on screen.

A compliant exampleexample

Acme Coffee: your basket is still here — 2 bags of Ethiopia Guji, $34 total. Check out at https://acmecoffee.com/cart/4471 Reply STOP to opt out.

Common mistakespitfalls

A "reply Y to confirm and we will charge your card on file" flow is exactly the prohibited pattern, and it is the one most cart platforms offer as a headline feature.

Notesnotes

Universal for the same reason as MSG-263: no registration fact declares a cart programme, so the condition lives in the criteria and opens with a PASS boundary.

Rules you will hit next

One other rule reads cart-reminder message body. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.

MSG-263An abandoned-cart message must carry an opt-out noticeBlockingBLOCKING MSG-008Opt-in confirmation must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKING MSG-009HELP reply must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKING MSG-011Opt-out confirmation must be 20–255 charactersBlockingBLOCKING MSG-018An MMS campaign must attach at least one sample media fileBlockingBLOCKING MSG-019Each MMS sample file must sit under its per-type size ceilingBlockingBLOCKING

All message content rules

MSG-264 is one of 122 message content rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.