I registered for the WhatsApp Developers Programme a few months back and was told that 'It's not ready yet, but we'll contact you when it is'. Yesterday I got a

I registered for the WhatsApp Developers Programme a few months back and was told that 'It's not ready yet, but we'll contact you when it is'. Yesterday I got an email telling me that basically I have to partner with (and pay for) services from Twilio or couple of others if I want 'developer' type access. It seems that independent developers will never get legal access to integrate automation or build CRM type apps using WhatsApp, which sucks considering how prevalent WhatsApp usage is.