If you are reading an older implementation guide, a competitor's page from the same era, or an internal document that predates your current roadmap, you will find this channel called Apple Business Chat. It is the same channel, renamed in September 2021, and the documentation moved with the name.
What is it called now?
Apple Messages for Business. That is the name across Apple's live documentation, and Apple's own page for the channel opens with "Apple Messages for Business" and the line "Let your customers message with you through the Messages app."
The old name persists in one place that trips people up: Apple's URLs. developer.apple.com/business-chat/ answers with a permanent redirect to register.apple.com/business-chat, which redirects again to register.apple.com/messages, and that is where the current Apple Messages for Business content is served. So a link labelled Business Chat can be entirely current, and a search result carrying the old name may be Apple's own page.
Did anything change besides the name?
Less than you would expect of the rules, which is the useful part of this answer. Apple's Business Chat policy document, which it still hosts, is dated December 2020 and carries these two requirements:
"The business must provide access to a live agent during its regular business hours. A business must not provide a limited or bot-only solution."
And, on who may speak first:
"Your business is prohibited from sending unsolicited messages. Your business may only send a message in response to an active conversation unless you comply with the restrictions below."
Both sentences survive nearly verbatim in Apple's current policy page, which adds "in this channel" to the first. The structural facts also held: a business still needs an Apple-approved Messaging Service Provider, still cannot open a conversation, and still has to staff live agents.
What did change over the same period is the surrounding programme rather than the channel's shape: the documentation set, the registration flow in Apple Business Register, the review steps, and the set of interactive message types. So treat an old third-party guide as reliable about the channel's character and unreliable about any step you would follow.
When did the rename happen?
September 2021, and Apple dates it itself. The revision history of the Messages for Business documentation records:
"September 20, 2021 | 2.0.0 | Rebranded Business Chat to Messages for Business; Message Suggest to Message Suggest; removed 'BETA' from Quick Reply."
Read that for what it is, a documentation revision entry rather than a product announcement: it dates when Apple's own documentation set changed the name, which is the closest thing to an official date that Apple publishes. The same table dates the documentation set's "Initial release" to 22 June 2021, and Apple's Business Chat policies and best practices document is stamped December 2020, so the two brackets agree.
For most purposes the date matters less than what follows from it. Anything written under the old name predates that revision, so the registration and review steps in it are the parts worth distrusting.
What should I write in my own copy?
Apple's current name, spelled Apple's way, everywhere a customer can see it. This is not only a style question: Apple's Experience Review lists "incorrect product naming" among the reasons a brand fails, so the name in your help centre, your buttons and your agent macros is inside the scope of the review. What Apple's brand review involves covers the rest of that list.
Two practical habits follow. Sweep for the old name before you submit a review rather than after, including the places nobody edits, like macro libraries, printed materials and QR-code landing pages. And when you cite Apple, cite the current documentation: an old URL that redirects is fine, an old PDF quoted as current requirements is not.
Everything on this page was read on 4 September 2026 from Apple's own pages: Apple Messages for Business, the documentation's revision history, Appendix A: Policies, Pass the Experience Review and the archived Business Chat Policies and Best Practices, December 2020.1. The redirect from developer.apple.com/business-chat/ was observed the same day.