RCS to Boost Conversational Commerce
September 2025 – Issue 1293
The short message service (SMS) technology that transmits text-only messages between phones on cellular networks was commercialized more than 30 years ago.
Despite its limitations, SMS has played a role in recent years in the growing field of conversational commerce, which is the engagement of customers through channels that include mobile, email, chatbots, messaging apps (Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Messenger, et al.), and voice assistants (Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa).
Email, voice, direct mail, and simple SMS are tired marketing channels. Rich Communication Services (RCS), an IP-based messaging standard capable of delivering more advanced interactive experiences over smartphones, is poised to make an impact on conversational commerce.
In the U.S., telecom carriers AT&T and T-Mobile have been capable of supporting RCS since 2015 and Verizon since 2019. However, Apple iOS has been RCS-ready only since the third quarter of 2024 (iOS 18 rollout).
Because the iOS market share position is so strong in the U.S., more than 50% of the installed base, it was Apple’s decision to support RCS that served as a catalyst to create RCS-based marketing opportunities. Android devices have been RCS-enabled for nearly a decade.
The expectation is that small, midsized, and large merchants in a wide variety of vertical markets will want to communicate with their customers using RCS messaging, leveraging the internet, mobile data, and Wi-Fi to present rich media to consumers in an app-like user experience within a phone’s messaging screen.
Importantly, messages delivered via RCS promise consumers that the sender has been verified through the GSMA, the global association of mobile network operators, and Google’s Jibe platform, which facilitates RCS services.
Payment functionality will be an integrated feature of RCS communications. Authvia, which owns five patents related to conversational commerce, has been building the infrastructure that companies need to deliver high-quality customer experiences in the RCS channel.
Authvia, which is integrated with message aggregators Syniverse, Infobip, Sinch, and Twilio, is a software-as-a-service orchestration layer.
The company does not process payments, but is used by acquirers including Worldpay, Elavon, PNC, and JPMorgan Chase to support merchants that want to send invoices and receive payments via text messages.
Authvia facilitates payments by credit card, debit card, ACH, PayPal, and all major digital wallets.
The PCI-compliant Txt2Pay payment platform can be used with QR codes, IVRs, card capture widgets, card vaults, messaging apps, and email as well as with SMS and RCS. Txt2Pay can also be used to send money to consumers via Visa Direct.
Card issuers could use RCS for customer acquisition, collections, loading digital wallets, fraud alerts, and upsell offers.
Interviewed for this article:
Chris Brunner, Chief Executive Officer, Authvia
Park City, Utah
chris@authvia.com | www.authvia.com
Prior issues: 1286, 1253, 1241, 1224, 1212
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