Verify now delivers one-time passcodes over Telegram, alongside email, SMS, and WhatsApp. The channel is available in every country and sits after WhatsApp and SMS but **before email**, so no verification changes the channel it starts on. Where a recipient has both a phone number and an email address, Telegram is now tried before the email fallback. If you have pinned a channel order for a country, Telegram joins the end of that pin instead, until you save a new order placing it where you want it.

Codes arrive from Telegram's own verified notification account. There is no Bird sender and no sender of your own to configure, which is a property of the Telegram Gateway rather than something still to come. A number is checked for whether it can receive a Telegram message before one is sent, and where it cannot, the verification moves to the next channel without a message going out.

**Using it**

Nothing is required to turn it on. To reach Telegram earlier for a given country, reorder that country's channels in [country configuration](/docs/guides/verify/countries), or name the order per request with `options.channels` on [`POST /v1/verify/verifications`](/docs/api/reference/create-verification). `telegram` is a valid channel name everywhere a channel name is accepted.

**One thing to check if you call the API directly**

A per-country channel order must name every channel available in that country. Telegram has now joined that set, so orders you saved before this release keep working, but **re-submitting** one is rejected with a `422` until you add `telegram` to it. Reading the country's current channels and submitting them back is enough. The dashboard handles this for you.