Bot commercial model FAQ - legacy

To create and publish a chatbot on Rakuten Viber by yourself, please consult our full Rakuten Viber chatbot API documentation here.

As an alternative solution, you can select one of our official Rakuten Viber chatbot partners to help you build and integrate your chatbot on Rakuten Viber through their platform.

By agreeing to our commercial terms you make your chatbots eligible to be verified, searchable, and discoverable. This process will include the full completion of the on-boarding and verification operations managed by the Rakuten Viber team.

To become an official Rakuten Viber chatbot partner and be referenced as such on our business website, please get in touch with our Rakuten Viber team, who will be able to review your application.

To initiate a conversation with its subscribers, a chatbot can send the full range of message types and formats: text, pictures, videos, files, carousels, stickers, call-to-action buttons, location, and contact cards. You can find details about all these message types in our API documentation.

Please note that the welcome message type is not counted as a chatbot-initiated message and remains free of charge.

At the beginning of each calendar month, Rakuten Viber automatically supplies each chatbot account with 10,000 free chatbot-initiated messages. These 10,000 are only available within that month and expire as soon as the next month's free messages are added. In other words, they don't accumulate, but you will have 10,000 free chatbot-initiated messages at the start of each calendar month, regardless of how many you spent during the previous month.

Replying to users within 24 hours of their query is always free. Here's why: whenever a subscriber messages the chatbot—whether of their own initiative or in response to your chatbot-initiated message—a 24-hour session is activated. All the messages exchanged during sessions are 100% free of charge.

Chatbot session messages and chatbot-initiated messages follow our generic Send message guidelines that you can retrieve in our Rakuten Viber chatbot API documentation here. Chatbot owners will be able to send additional chatbot-initiated messages, above their monthly threshold, as long as they have signed our Rakuten Viber chatbot commercial terms and have a positive account balance in their chatbot account.

A welcome message is a message that allows the chatbot to send one message to a user who is not a subscriber yet upon entering the bot. The welcome message is not categorized as a chatbot-initiated message and remains free of charge. For additional information about the welcome messages mechanism, please visit our Developers site.
Please note: A message sent by the chatbot to a user who is already a subscriber upon entering the bot will be considered as a chatbot-initiated message, and not as a free welcome message.

Starting September 1st, 2022, once your chatbot has reached its monthly limit, Rakuten Viber will block any extra chatbot-initiated messages you try to send to your subscribers. By agreeing to our commercial terms and submitting your prepayment, you can enable Rakuten Viber to allow your chatbot to send extra chatbot-initiated messages to your subscribers.

To agree to the Rakuten Viber chatbot commercial terms, please contact the Rakuten Viber team here.

As part of our Rakuten Viber chatbot commercial terms, Rakuten Viber will request a minimum prepayment amount to be paid. Your prepaid amount will be added to your chatbot account upon reception. It will allow your chatbot account to send additional chatbot-initiated messages. After the month has ended, you will receive an invoice based on actual consumption, which you will need to pay in order to top up your balance. You can still, however, pay before the end of the month in order to top up your account if it's running low on funds.

For payment, we accept the following currencies: USD, EUR, GBP.