WhatsApp error 130497: Business account is restricted from messaging users in this country

Code 130497 tells you that your WhatsApp Business Account is not allowed to message users whose phone numbers belong to a particular country. Meta's Business Messaging Policy restricts certain business categories from messaging into certain markets, and some accounts pick up geo-restrictions as part of an integrity action. The restriction is on the account and the destination country, not on the individual recipient or the content of the message.

You will typically see this on a subset of a campaign: sends to most countries succeed, sends to one country code fail consistently. The recipient has done nothing to cause it and has not blocked you.

This is not a messaging-limit issue and not a token issue. It is also not 131026, which is about the recipient's own device or account state. Retrying to the same country will keep failing until the restriction changes.

Maintain an allowlist of destination countries that you know are permitted for your business category and enforce it before sending, so restricted destinations are filtered out instead of producing errors. Keep your business category accurate in Business Manager, and review Account Quality whenever you expand into a new market. Account-wide enforcement shows up as 368 instead; if a restriction notice appears in Account Quality, the appeal path in the account restriction guide applies.