Genesys Cloud - Main

Hi all,

I'm running into an issue with native WhatsApp messaging and Identity Resolution, and I'd like to understand why.

Scenario

I manually created an External Contact (via the UI), including the WhatsApp number in the profile. Identity Resolution is Active for the WhatsApp inbound contact point (Messaging Platforms > WhatsApp), and the Architect flow is simple (single transfer to queue).

Example of the created contact:

{
  "id": "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "division": {
    "id": "*"
  },
  "firstName": "Test",
  "middleName": "GNS",
  "lastName": "Contact",
  "whatsAppId": {
    "phoneNumber": {
      "display": "57XXXXXXXXX",
      "acceptsSMS": false,
      "userInput": "57XXXXXXXXX"
    },
    "displayName": "TC"
  },
  "identifiers": [],
  "modifyDate": "2026-07-01T16:03:45Z",
  "createDate": "2026-07-01T14:47:54Z",
  "surveyOptOut": false,
  "type": "Curated",
  "selfUri": "/api/v2/externalcontacts/contacts/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
}

The problem

When the customer messages the WhatsApp line, the interaction does NOT link to my manually created contact. Instead, IR creates a brand new Identified contact on each incoming interaction, ignoring the one I created.

Per the Contact identification overview, for social channels IR stitches the contact identity using the platform identifier, and for WhatsApp that identifier is the phone number:
https://help.genesys.cloud/articles/contact-verification-overview/

Since my manual contact already has that WhatsApp phone number, I'd expect IR to find and link it, but it doesn't.

Supporting detail I found while troubleshooting

Comparing the contact with ?expand=identifiers, my manually created contact has "identifiers": [] (empty), even though the whatsAppId profile field is populated. The auto-created Identified contacts (the ones IR generates from the incoming interaction) DO have the SocialWhatsapp identifier populated. Re-saving my contact via the UI did not change this. Creating the contact via the Enrich endpoint (with matchingIdentifiers) did make it link correctly afterward - so I have a workaround, but I'd like to understand the underlying cause.

I've also reviewed the channel configuration steps here and the setup matches (IR toggle on for the WhatsApp configuration):
https://help.genesys.cloud/articles/configure-identity-resolution-for-different-channels/

My question

Why would an incoming WhatsApp interaction fail to link to a manually created External Contact and instead create a new one, when the contact already has the matching WhatsApp phone number in its profile? Is manual creation expected NOT to register the social identifier used by IR (making Enrich the intended path for contacts that must match on WhatsApp), or is there a permission/division/config factor I'm missing?

Thanks!