RCS Messaging

OpenMarket's Early Access Program for Rich Communication Services (RCS) has us very excited about the opportunities ahead. We believe this new messaging channel will redefine what companies can deliver to their customers with a mobile message. The SMS channel offers the ubiquitous infrastructure and familiarity, while RCS brings the elegance and user experience of an app. It's a perfect union.

For those new to RCS, here are the primary ways in which our customers are using it:

  • Promotion of special offers, new products, movie trailers and concerts with multimedia content
  • Verifying the authenticity of financial transactions and enabling customers to immediately report fraud
  • Delivering e-tickets, enabling users to view their seats and giving them the option to change or purchase additional tickets
  • Reminding customers of service calls, enabling them to reschedule and showing them a photo of who is coming to their door
  • Reminding customers of appointments and providing them with a map and directions to help them arrive on time
  • Inviting customer feedback on service quality

To see feedback from our Early Access Program participants, check out our "six impressive takeaways" blog post.

Features we support

With OpenMarket your RCS messaging solution will let you:

  • Look up a handset and determine its RCS compatibility, and fall back to SMS for phones that don't support RCS
  • Support both RCS message formats: UP 2.0 and UP 1.0
  • Receive delivery and read receipts containing information about message delivery status and how the recipient interacted with the message
  • Brand the message with custom colors and logo
  • Include interactive elements such as action buttons and rich media cards
  • Store multimedia files on OpenMarket's content management system

For more details on these, see Features of RCS.

Comparison of SMS, MMS, and RCS

The following image shows the difference between an SMS, MMS and RCS message. One of the most noticeable advantages of RCS is the ability to provide action buttons. Research shows that 83% of end users prefer using these buttons rather than typing keyword responses. For more examples of RCS messages, see our RCS eBook.

The RCS ecosystem

Since 2016, RCS has been steadily gaining momentum with mobile operators, OS providers, and handset manufacturers. Support by mobile operators is critical, as they control a major part of the infrastructure required for RCS messaging. OpenMarket is committed to continuing to work with its global community of mobile operators to keep up the momentum. Helping advance the technology is the GSMA, which in 2018 announced the availability of Universal Profile 2.0 (UP 2.0), a set of features aimed at simplifying product development and ensuring compatibility between different RCS implementations.

Working with our industry partners we have collaborated on trial RCS programs for Virgin Trains, Detroit Pistons, FICO, Philips, Audible and Sky TV. In addition we collaborated with another mobile messaging provider, Mobivity, on a trial for Subway Restaurants. (Read about this particular trial in this February blog post.)

Integrating with OpenMarket

Using our RCS messaging service involves integrating with the Invoke API. It authenticates your message requests, performs checks on the contents of your requests, and returns codes so you know whether a request was accepted for processing. In addition to the Invoke API, you may also opt to store your multimedia content files in our content management system. If you do then you'll also integrate with our Media Upload API.

For details on using our RCS APIS, see

How to get started

If you are currently an OpenMarket customer running SMS or MMS traffic with OpenMarket, reach out to your account manager to get started with RCS. If you are new to OpenMarket, fill out the short form on our website or contact our friendly sales representatives at one of these locations: 

Seattle, Washington - USA +1.877.412.7201 sales-us@openmarket.com
Detroit, Michigan - USA +1.877.412.7201 sales-us@openmarket.com
Sydney, Australia +61.2.9890.1391 sales-australia@openmarket.com
London, UK +44.20.3553.6010 sales-uk@openmarket.com