SMS works. That is not really up for debate. Open rates around 98%, backed by industry data from SimpleTexting and Forbes, are hard to walk away from, and for pure delivery of a short alert or a one-time code, it still does the job. But SMS has not changed in any meaningful way since it was invented. The 160-character cap, no native images, no sender verification, and no way for a customer to do anything without leaving the thread entirely – that is the same experience it was three decades ago. Meanwhile, every other touchpoint a customer has with a brand has become more visual, more interactive, and more immediate. At some point the gap between what SMS offers and what customers now experience everywhere else starts to show. For a lot of Australian businesses, that point is now.
What RCS Is, in Plain Terms
Rich Communication Services is the protocol built to replace SMS as the default standard for mobile messaging. The name sounds more complicated than it is. Think of it as the messaging inbox customers already have on their phones, except it now supports images, video, branded sender profiles, interactive buttons, and two-way conversations. Nothing new to install. No third-party app. Android has had RCS capability for years, and Apple added support with iOS 18 in September 2024, which was a significant moment because it finally made RCS a cross-platform channel. According to Sinch, messages can run up to 3,072 characters and files up to 100 MiB per message. That is a different product entirely from what SMS can carry, even with MMS factored in.
For businesses still working out the fundamentals, a solid starting point is this overview of ”what is RCS messaging?” which covers the core mechanics without the jargon.
The Performance Gap Is Bigger Than Most People Expect
According to CM.com, RCS open rates sit between 90 and 95%. That is close enough to SMS that it does not feel like a trade-off, and yet it comes with verified branding, rich media, and in-thread interactivity that SMS cannot touch. On click-through rates, Sinch benchmarks show RCS campaigns landing between three and seven times higher than Rich SMS. Sinch also tracked a 111% increase in RCS usage during the 2024 holiday season versus the same period in 2023, with brands recording open rates of 53% on campaigns. Infobip, analysing more than 530 billion platform interactions, recorded a 500% year-on-year lift in RCS usage through 2024, with a 14x surge in North America alone following Apple’s iOS 18 launch. Their Messaging Trends Report separately puts the jump at 550% over the calendar year. However you cut the data, the direction is the same.
What You Can Actually Do With It
The capabilities that set RCS apart from SMS come down to four things that matter in practice:
- Verified sender identity: Your brand name, logo, and a verification checkmark appear in the thread before the message is opened. For customers who have learned to be suspicious of unknown SMS senders, this alone changes how the message is received.
- Rich media: Images, short videos, PDFs, and interactive product carousels, all supported natively, with files up to 100 MiB.
- Read and delivery receipts: You can see when a message was delivered and when it was read, which makes follow-up sequencing far less guesswork.
- Buttons inside the thread: Confirm a booking, track a parcel, browse a product range. All without leaving the conversation.
None of these are available in standard SMS. In practice, they change the whole dynamic of what a single message can accomplish.
The Sectors Moving on This Early
Healthcare has been one of the faster movers, using RCS for appointment reminders that patients can confirm or reschedule with a single tap rather than having to call or log into a portal. Banks are using it for fraud alerts with one-touch verification. Airlines are sending boarding passes that update automatically when gates change. Retailers are running product carousels inside the message thread, with purchase options built in. Infobip’s campaign data puts the cost per click on RCS at 14 times lower than SMS and notes that only one-third of the RCS messages were needed to produce the same number of conversions as a comparable SMS campaign. Lower volume, lower cost per result, better engagement. The operational case is straightforward.
How It Sits Next to WhatsApp and Email
This is worth clarifying because it comes up a lot. WhatsApp is not a competitor to RCS in the way people sometimes assume. It has around 2.8 billion monthly active users globally and more than 2 billion daily active users, according to Meta’s published data, and it drives genuine engagement in markets where it dominates. But it requires the app and operates entirely within Meta’s platform rules, which limits what businesses can do and how they can communicate. Email remains useful for longer content and detailed follow-up, though commercial open rates below 20% make it a poor fit for anything time-sensitive. RCS lands in the native inbox, requires nothing extra from the customer, and now works across Android and iPhone. It is not trying to replace any of these channels. It just occupies a space that none of them currently fill.
A Practical Way to Start Without Disrupting What Already Works
The good news is that getting into RCS does not mean tearing apart your current setup. Most CPaaS providers offer automatic SMS fallback, so if a customer’s device or carrier does not yet support RCS, the message still arrives as a standard SMS. You are not choosing between reach and capability. A reasonable starting point is picking one or two touchpoints where richer content would make a clear difference: an order confirmation, an appointment reminder, or a campaign that currently relies on a plain-text link to a landing page. Run a pilot. Compare the engagement data against your SMS baseline. Choosing a CPaaS provider with solid Australian carrier relationships is the key infrastructure decision, and it is worth taking some time on that rather than going with whoever is cheapest.
It Is Early Enough to Get Ahead, but Not for Much Longer
Sinch’s 2025 State of Customer Communications survey covered 1,600 business leaders across retail, healthcare, technology, and financial services. 87% were already familiar with RCS, and of those, 59% described it as game-changing for customer communications in their sector. That is not a niche finding from a specialist report. It reflects where mainstream business thinking on mobile messaging already sits. Australian brands that build some real-world RCS experience now, before the channel becomes the expected standard, will be ahead of the curve in a way that is genuinely useful. The ones that wait tend to catch up under pressure, which is a harder way to learn a new channel.
