From the explosive growth of RCS to the strategic role of AI, and the undeniable shift in SMS’s purpose the recent MEF Leadership Forum Nordics event paints a clear picture of where the industry is headed.
RCS: The Unstoppable Ascent
RCS is no longer a buzzword; it’s a rapidly growing reality.
- Massive Traffic Growth: RCS traffic soared to an impressive 24 billion messages in 2024, with India and Brazil leading the charge. This represents a significant leap towards the 50-billion message mark that analysts now forecast for 2025, according to Juniper Research.
- Essential Playbook for Success: The MEF’s new RCS Positioning Report is a must-read for anyone in the space. This comprehensive guide demystifies “Basic RCS”, outlines effective pricing models, and provides rollout tactics specifically tailored for operators, aggregators and brands.
- RBM-First: A Revenue Imperative: Panelists at the forum were unanimous: putting RBM front and center is the key for MNOs to unlock new revenue streams and craft richer messaging journeys.
- The Device Reach Hurdle: Despite the strong momentum from Android and Apple’s recent embrace of RCS, RBM handset penetration still lags. Bridging this gap through aggressive OEM partnerships, clearer consumer communications, and smart fallback paths will be crucial for those aiming to monetize RBM first.
Our Takeaway: 2025 is the make-or-break year for operators looking to transition from “RCS pilots” to full-scale RBM revenue streams. If you’re not actively mapping out a handset-reach plan today, you can bet your competitors are.
Apple Lights the Fuse Under RCS
Apple’s decision to bring native RCS support to iOS 18 last September eliminated the channel-coverage gap that had hung over rich business messaging for a decade. With both iOS and Android on the same technological footing, enterprises finally have “smartphone ubiquity” for features such as verified sender IDs, carousels, quick-reply buttons and high-resolution media. Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of executives surveyed in the Future of Messaging Report 2025 cite RCS Business Messaging (RBM) as the single biggest accelerant for rich messaging adoption in the next three years.
RBM’s Monetization Moment
Momentum is already turning into hard plans: more than half of operators, aggregators and CPaaS providers have live RBM offers or launches scheduled for 2025. Nearly two-thirds expect RBM to contribute ≥11 % of total business-messaging revenue within three years, driven chiefly by conversational commerce and post-purchase customer support. Those expectations align with wider market data: Future Market Insights pegs conversational-commerce spend at a 14.8 % CAGR through 2035.
AI: The Secret Sauce for Engagement and Defense
Rich channels create richer data sets and offer the perfect fuel for machine-learning models. Over 70 % of survey respondents view AI/ML as the most effective defence against evolving fraud vectors, and the same community believes AI-driven personalisation will be the primary catalyst for RBM revenue growth. External trends back them up: vendors are already embedding machine learning models to spot scam texts in real time, while advanced firewalls use these models to categorise traffic and automate blocking rules.
SMS: From Messaging Workhorse to Feeder Channel
Domestic A2P SMS continues to be the bedrock of business messaging – user authentication, service alerts, logistics updates, even the emerging “IoT wake-up” are all use cases with huge value for businesses.
International messaging traffic, however, is buckling under double-digit termination-rate hikes and an epidemic of artificially inflated OTP traffic. Industry players are blunt: 85.7 % foresee overall SMS erosion by 2029, and only 12 % believe new use cases will materially extend its life. The prevailing view is that SMS will act as the on-ramp that nudges users toward RBM conversations where richer engagement – and higher ARPU – await. Additionally, SMS is needed as a fallback channel in the event of IP service outage or in less advanced economies.
The Anti-Fraud Arms Race Goes Rich-Channel
Fraudsters are already probing RBM’s richer payloads: think phishing buttons disguised as “Track my order” or AI-generated product images that lure users off-channel. More than 90 % of stakeholders plan to raise their fraud-mitigation spend this year, and fewer than one in ten feel “fully covered” by existing toolsets. The consensus: only continuous investment in AI- and ML-based analytics, coupled with operator-grade firewalls that shut grey routes and scam traffic, will keep trust levels high enough for RBM to fulfil its revenue promise.
Strategic Takeaways for Industry Players
- Mobile operators: Fast-track RBM commercial models that balance traffic-based fees with outcome-based pricing (e.g., pay-per-conversion). Bundle fraud analytics as standard to protect margins as SMS transitions across to rich messaging.
- Enterprises and brands: Start designing conversation-first user journeys now. Early movers get a first-party data edge and higher click-through rates before channel of communication becomes the norm for consumers.
- CPaaS providers: Differentiate on orchestration—dynamic channel failover, AI-guided agent hand-off and real-time anti-AIT scoring—to remain the integration layer of choice.
- Regulators: Harmonize sender-ID and consent frameworks across SMS and RCS to avoid loopholes that fraudsters can exploit as channels converge.
Outlook: A Hybrid Future
The next five years will not be a straightforward hand-off from SMS to RCS, but a period of hybrid coexistence where value shifts from volume to experience. Players that master AI-driven engagement while hardening their defences will capture the lion’s share of the projected $30-plus billion incremental revenue that rich messaging unlocks. Everyone else risks watching their legacy SMS lines quietly fade into the background noise of the network.
To learn more about the topics covered in this article, or to discuss how Openmind Networks can help you navigate your RCS and RCS Business Messaging journey, please get in touch or contact our team of messaging experts online here.
