You can find documentation on this whatsapp API above answer. Adding a few more points to that based on my own trial version:
For direct communication with a specific contact you need to follow this contact. ABID is the parameter that is automatically generated by the system when a contact is saved. Therefore, if you do not have a number stored in your contact, so you cannot open it from your application.
There is one workaround that I used. When your application is first downloaded to the device, you save the contact number in the address book. when the number is saved successfully, you will get the ABID in the opposite direction. You can use this ABID to call messaging with this contact.
NSURL *whatsappURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"whatsapp://send?abid=123&text=Hello%2C%20World!"];
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