Ahead of the current: experience how DIMOCO combines RCS and additional features, such as payment
Born in 2007, the rich communications service (RCS) movement seemed to peter out at various stages throughout the last years, but thanks to recent events, Google’s purchase of Jibe, the release of UP2.0, Samsung’s aggressive RCS moves and MNOs pushing to turn up A2P connectivity, it has become more than just a hot topic that everybody is talking about. Now – finally – 2019 seems to be the year that the messaging Concorde will finally transform into a supersonic communication yet.
At this point in time, only 0.3 percent of total smartphone users are on RCS.
However, Mobilesquared predicts that already in 2020 RCS will not only reach 1 billion users, yet by the end of the year stretch to a staggering 1.47 billion users, outgrowing the likes of Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber.
Though impressive, this share will still only account for a small percentage of the entire A2P traffic. However, how small is small really? In 2018, the A2P SMS messaging market was already worth US$17.01 billion according to Mobilesquared research (Global A2P SMS Messaging Forecasts by Country & Operator, 2017-2022). Accordingly, even a small share is still a significant share and the revenue opportunity is far from small, a fact that especially operators are taking a keen interest in, in addition to mounting pressure by OTTs.
GSMA found that back in February 2018 RCS had been launched by 57 operators in 27 countries, including Vodafone being live in 14 countries, Orange and Deutsche Telekom in three countries, in addition to America Movil, ATT Mexico, Oi, & Telefonica covering two thirds of LATAM, contributing to 150m monthly active users. A couple of months later, today 76 operators worldwide are live, the GSMA forecasts an additional 59 operator launches over the next 12 months.
RCS global launches
According to Juniper Research, A2P messaging users will continue to use SMS owing to the familiarity of the protocol.
As a result, it claimed that the growth of RCS will be mostly driven by new traffic, rather than the migration of existing traffic from SMS.
The rich media interactivity of RCS will make the emerging messaging technology popular for retail and marketing businesses, in addition to increasing operators’ total messaging revenues. The ugly duckling’s transformation into a wonderful swan does spring to mind when the features are compared, the restricted SMSs 160 characters format to no character restriction, in addition to rich media, app-like functionality and user data, easy integration of various payment methods or age verification for example.
The first pilot project was the launch Virgin Trains to use RCS messaging for passenger communications back in September 2018., Virgin Trains becoming the first company in the world to use RCS-based messages. One of many we might add, as 82% of enterprises are interested in RCS, 60% would start using the service within 6 months and 12 percent would spend > 5000USD / months.
DIMOCO showcases how RCS is combined with additional features, such as online payment, including Direct Carrier Billing and credit cards
The DIMOCO lottery was initially presented at MWC 2019.
You are still able to access the demo in the online version by clicking the bellow image.
DIMOCO Messaging, DIMOCO Payment Services and DIMOCO Carrier Billing joined forces and showcased their joint messaging and payment portfolio in an interactive RCS DIMOCO Lottery at the Mobile World Congress 2019.
The DIMOCO Champagne Lottery
Online gambling is, of course, a huge and promising online market and an excellent and obvious exemplary project for RCS. In addition, DIMOCO is a member of the European Lottery Association (EL) and World Lottery Association (WLA), offering customized Direct Carrier Billing solutions, in addition to alternative payment options to lotteries and therefore an excellent and obvious exemplary project for RCS.
The DIMOCO lottery demonstrates how easily RCS can transport a rich user experience when buying (any paying for) an online lottery ticket, including an age verification process (AVS) and a choice of various payment options.
No app needed, all directly in the users SMS inbox.
Revisit the DIMOCO stand at the Mobile World Congress 2019
Experience how DIMOCO combines RCS and additional features, such as payment and age verification in a messaging RCS model.
Simply click on the bellow image to action the demo in the online version.
Mathias Höllerl, Managing Director of DIMOCO Messaging, a founding member of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF)
spoke to MEF team at MWC 2019 on DIMOCO’s FUTURE-PROOF intake on RCS.
Watch full interview
We at DIMOCO have been bridging the gap between message and audience, between people and goods’n’services, between vision and reality for almost 20 years. We are going to keep things like this. RCS will be no exception.
If you would like a One-on-One presentation or further insights, please contact sales@dimoco.eu or catch us at these tradeshows