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Every template is reviewed by Meta before it can be sent. Most are decided in minutes; the rejections have specific, nameable causes, and almost all of them are formatting rather than judgement.

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The process

1

You write it

Body text, a category, a language, and example values for every blank.
Meta requires an example value for every variable at creation time. A template submitted with {{1}} and no sample of what {{1}} looks like is rejected before a human sees it.
2

Meta reviews it automatically

A machine-learning review decides most templates within minutes.
3

Or a human does

Anything the automated pass cannot triage is routed to a person, which can take up to 24–48 hours.
Submit templates before you need them. A campaign planned for Friday and a template submitted Friday morning is a campaign that may not go out.
4

Approved, or rejected with a reason

Approved templates can be sent. Rejected ones cannot, and the reason code tells you what to change.

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Why templates get rejected

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INVALID_FORMAT — the most common, and always fixable

Nothing to do with your wording. Four causes:
A template may not begin or end with a variable. This one catches almost everybody, because it is not intuitive — the rule exists so a message cannot be made to look like it came from somebody else. Put a word before and after.

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TAG_CONTENT_MISMATCH — the category does not match the content

You submitted a promotional message as utility, or the language you declared is not the language of the text. Fix by re-categorising honestly. See the categories below.

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ABUSIVE_CONTENT — a policy violation

Content that breaches Meta’s Terms of Service, Commerce Policy or Business Policy. In practice this catches:
  • Threatening legal action, or threatening to publicly shame a customer
  • Anything in a prohibited category — Meta’s Commerce Policy bars a specific list including alcohol, tobacco, weapons, drugs and adult products
  • Requesting sensitive information (full card numbers, passwords) in the message body

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Other frequent causes

bit.ly, tinyurl and similar are frequently rejected — a shortened link hides the destination, and Meta treats that as a phishing signal. Use your own domain.
Hi {{1}}, welcome to [Company Name] — the bracketed placeholder is not a variable and reads as an unfinished template.
Same content under a different name.
Rejected as low quality, particularly where it makes the sender look fraudulent.
A template declared en whose body is Hindi. Declare the language you actually wrote.

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Choosing the right category

The test for utility is “did the customer do something that makes this message expected?” An order confirmation follows an order. A “we miss you” message follows nothing, and is marketing however you label it.

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Authentication templates are special

Meta writes and localises the wording for one-time passwords itself. The editor copies Meta’s text exactly rather than letting you write your own — rewording it gets the template rejected. Authentication templates are also gated behind business verification.

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Limits on templates themselves

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Editing an approved template

Editing sends it back through review. The previous version keeps working until the new one is decided, so an edit does not take a working template offline — but a rejected edit means you are still on the old wording.
For anything you send often, treat an approved template as immutable and create ..._v2 instead. That way a rejected change never blocks a working message, and you can compare how the two perform.

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After approval, it can still be taken away

Approval is not permanent. Meta keeps scoring how customers react, and a template that gets blocked or reported can be paused and eventually disabled. See Quality and limits.