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Messaging
COMING SOON: RCS BUSINESS MESSAGING
Get ready for the RCS revolution
Four reasons to choose Bandwidth for RCS
RCS Business Messaging provides a rich customer experience thanks to verified brand presentation, customizable visual themes, easier 2-way texting and the ability to switch to voice calls, and interactive button actions.
Increase consumer trust
Verified sending means consumers know you’re you, and open up more meaningful engagements with your brand.
Put data in the driver’s seat
Leverage deeper insights like read receipts and click-through rates to know exactly where your messages are going.
Create dynamic engagements
Think outside the text box. Suggested actions and replies, high resolution photos, and videos create much higher engagement than SMS alone.
RCS is new to the US—partner with an expert who’s not
Bandwidth lets you work directly with US industry experts, gives you no-code options to get started, and is building automated registration processes and expert guidance, all to make scaling easy.
How to set your platform up for RCS success
If you’re planning to add RCS Business Messaging to your communications platform, there are a few key areas to prepare, especially as you talk with customers about the potential benefits and requirements of RCS Business Messaging.
Whether you’re focused solely on the advantages of verified sending, or you’re planning to leverage rich engagement features for a sophisticated conversational messaging strategy, RCS offers specific advantages for different use cases. Because pricing differs depending on whether rich media is used, it’s wise to start your journey by mapping out your use cases to determine what exciting new RCS features could optimize them.
- Customer service & support
- Reservations and appointments
- Sales engagement
- One-way sales promotions
- SMS surveys
- Point-of-sale transactional notifications
RCS Business Messaging Availability Timeline
2008
RCS invented by Google and available on Android
2023
Apple announces adoption of RCS
2024
US providers and carriers start building RCS protocols
Bandwidth registers as Google RBM Partner
2025
RCS Business Messaging fully available across US carriers
Bandwidth RBM launches
Learn more about RCS and Advanced Messaging
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Talk to an expert about how RCS messaging can revolutionize your business
Our messaging experts are standing by to share more details about our upcoming RCS solution, as well as our existing Messaging and Voice APIs, Insights, and Tools designed to give businesses a seamless communications experience.
FAQs about RCS
RCS is an industry standard for media rich communications. It’s been around since 2007, and is officially owned by the GSMA. It works on the GSMA’s universal profile system, which is a set of user stories & features including P2P and A2P use cases. While RCS has been around for a while, Apple’s 2023 decision to support the standard has shifted RCS into the spotlight, since now it will be accessible on both Android and Apple devices.
RCS for Business Messaging is Google’s proprietary A2P messaging solution, which has become the global standard for RCS A2P messages. Google has worked to get buy-in to their standard from nearly every carrier on the planet, making it the universal standard.
RCS Business Messaging is enabled on many consumer devices, including Android phones and iPhones which have iOS 18 and up. However, while these devices can send and receive peer-to-peer RCS messages, carriers have not yet built the protocols for businesses to send RCS messages at scale.
SMS (Short Message Service) is currently the most common form of texting. It works between any text-enabled mobile numbers, and messages conveniently show up in the device’s native messaging app. It has high deliverability and open rates, and doesn’t require WiFi or mobile data. However, there is a limited character count. Longer messages, and any messages containing images, video, or sound, sent via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).
RCS is similar in that it also sends messages that show up in a device’s native messaging app. But because it is a newer protocol, it is only available on Android, and newer Apple devices, and has not yet been widely adapted for A2P (application-to-person) use.
RCS sends messages that appear directly in a device’s native messaging app, whereas WhatsApp is an over-the-top application which consumers must download. They both have similar capabilities and are partially encrypted channels.
Advanced Messaging is an umbrella term used by some mobile carriers to describe RCS and WhatsApp.
No, RCS is not considered an over-the-top (OTT) app. Instead, it uses the native messaging application built into Android smartphones and newer Apple devices.
Alphanumeric and RCS Business Messaging use verified brand name sender IDs, but depending on the aggregator used around the world, Alphanumeric IDs may not go through as much verification. The biggest difference is that Alphanumeric is one-way messaging and RCS/RBM is two-way messaging