Location Messages on WhatsApp: How to Send and Request a Location

A WhatsApp location request message is an interactive message with a “send location” button: the customer taps it, picks a location, and it comes back to you as a location message with latitude and longitude. The other direction, sending your own pin, is a plain location message with coordinates and an optional name and address.

Both are part of the WhatsApp Business Platform (API), and both are free-form messages, so they only go out inside the 24-hour customer service window. This guide gives the requests, the webhook you receive, a template option for outside the window, how customers share a location from the app, and what Automate AI supports today.

Three ways a location moves in a chat

Location requests, pins and location headers are all API message types. In the free WhatsApp Business app you’d send a pin from the attach menu, or simply ask the customer in words.

Send a location message (a map pin)

Send it to the usual endpoint, POST /<PHONE_NUMBER_ID>/messages, with type: "location" and a location object:

The response is the same as for any sent message, with the new message’s wamid in messages[].id, and you get sent, delivered and read statuses for it like any other message.

Send a location request message

A location request is an interactive message. It shows your body text and a send location button, and tapping the button opens WhatsApp’s location sharing screen. The request body looks like this:

• type: "interactive" and to: the customer’s number
• interactive.type: "location_request_message"
• interactive.body.text: your question, required, up to 1,024 characters, and it can include URLs
• interactive.action.name: "send_location"

Write the body so the customer knows why you’re asking and what happens next. Some sample wording to adapt:

Other interactive types, such as reply buttons and lists, are compared in WhatsApp buttons and list messages.

What you receive when a customer shares a location

Whether the customer taps your request button or shares a location on their own, you get a messages webhook with type: "location". Inside the location object:

If the location came through a Click-to-WhatsApp ad, the message also carries a referral object with the ad details. Envelope, signatures and retries are covered in WhatsApp Cloud API webhooks.

1. Store the coordinates with the order or ticket, not just the address text.
2. Don’t rely on name and address. They’re included only if the customer chooses to share them, so work from the coordinates if you need an address.
3. Reply to confirm what you understood, such as “Got it, delivering to Andheri East”.
4. Treat it as a single point. Meta’s location webhook carries one set of coordinates and doesn’t document live location, so don’t count on receiving live updates.

Outside the 24-hour window: a template with a location header

Both location messages and location requests are on Meta’s list of messages you can send while the customer service window is open. Once it closes, only approved templates go out. See the 24-hour window.

If you need to send a place to someone who hasn’t written recently, Meta offers a location header on templates. It appears as a map at the top of the template, and you supply the latitude, longitude, name and address when you send it, not when you create the template.

• Categories: location headers work only in Utility or Marketing templates.
• Static only: Meta says real-time locations aren’t supported.
• Good uses: an appointment reminder with the clinic’s pin, or a pickup notice with the collection point.

Location requests aren’t among Meta’s template types. To ask for a location outside the window, send a template with a quick-reply button such as “Share my address”, then send the location request once they tap it and the window reopens.

How customers share a location in the WhatsApp app

Customers can also share a location without any request from you. WhatsApp’s Help Center describes two kinds:

On Android the attach button is the paper clip. Live location stops when the time runs out, or earlier from the chat (Stop sharing) or from Settings › Privacy › Live location.

Locations in Automate AI

Here’s what works today, checked in the app’s code:

Until then, there are simple workarounds. Paste a maps link into your reply from the shared inbox. In a chatbot, send a text step with the link, or a website button that opens your store’s map. For directions in a reminder, put the link behind a website button on an approved template.

To collect an address in a chatbot, ask the customer to type it and save it with an Update Contact step, as shown in WhatsApp forms.

Privacy and good practice

• Ask only when you need it, and say why in the body text.
• Keep locations with the order, and delete them when your data rules say you should.
• Don’t ask for a live location to track a customer. Ask for the one place you need.
• Offer a typed address as an alternative for people who won’t share their location.