ACMA: Alphanumeric Sender ID Requirements

Alphanumeric Sender IDs in Australia must be registered with the Australian Communication and Media Authority's (ACMA) SMS Sender ID Register, or they'll be over stamped/replaced with 'Unverified'.

Use Case & Verification

Australian Businesses (ABN entities)

To register an alphanumeric sender ID, you’ll need a real reason for using that sender name. You must show that your sender ID is directly linked to your business or organisation.

Here’s what counts as a valid link:

• The sender ID matches your business name (as listed in the official ASIC Business Names Register)
• It matches your company name in the Australian Business Register (ABR)
• It’s a registered trademark in Australia or in another country (check IP Australia’s Trade Mark Search or an international register)
• Or, it matches a registered domain name (according to WHOIS records)

International Businesses (Non-ABN entities)

If you don’t have an ABN, you’ll need to show the sender ID matches your name on an official business register, trademark register, or some other recognised record from your own country.

In short you need to be able to prove the sender ID being registered belongs to you ie. No:

• Generic names eg. Alerts, OTP
• Undocumented brands
• Borrowing someone else's identity

Format requirements

Your Alphanumeric Sender ID must:

• Consist of the characters that correspond to decimal codes 32–126 from the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) standard – see below.
• Be at least 2 and no more than 11 characters long
• Not consist only of numbers
• Not contain a space or underscore at the beginning or end of the sender ID
• Not contain the word ‘Unverified’ (or another term specified as a disruption term by the ACMA for unregistered sender IDs)
• Not contain a word or words that are offensive, deceptive or misleading, using the commonly understood definitions of those terms.

Additionally, these sender IDs:

• Will be case insensitive (e.g. ‘ABC’ is considered the same as ‘abc’)
• Can be registered/used by multiple entities, so long as each entity can prove it has a valid use case (see section above). 

Permitted Alphanumeric sender ID characters