In 2024, consumer losses from text-initiated scams reached $470mn per the Federal Trade Commission and research from Proofpoint found a 2,534% increase in URL threats delivered via smishing attacks. Brands face an urgent need for a more secure and trustworthy messaging channel as standard SMS messaging suffers from customer fatigue and falling trust, which hurts engagement and conversions.
And that more secure way of doing it lies with RCS, believes customer experience company Airship. It has now added support for the advanced messaging service, enabling brands – not least in the mVAS sector – to create rich, two-way conversations that build customer trust, combat the rise of SMS fraud and accelerate business outcomes.
RCS directly addresses these challenges by upgrading traditional texting within the native messaging app on consumers’ phones. The channel provides verified sender profiles that display a brand’s name, logo and a verification badge to instantly build customer confidence. It also supports rich media like carousels and high-resolution images as well as interactive elements like suggested replies, “buy now” buttons and actions that guide customers to their next step. With Apple’s recent addition of RCS support in iOS 18, the channel is now mainstream and available to a massive global audience.
Unlike other solutions that require complex third-party integrations or manual setup, Airship has embedded RCS natively into its platform. This eliminates extra vendor management and IT dependency, allowing marketers to use existing SMS workflows to send RCS messages, reduce complexity and accelerate time to value.
The platform intelligently determines if a customer’s device supports RCS and automatically falls back to SMS or MMS if it does not, ensuring reliable message delivery. This allows teams to orchestrate end-to-end journeys that coordinate RCS with push notifications, email, mobile wallets and personalised content embedded in apps and websites. Brands also gain access to engagement metrics unavailable with SMS, such as read receipts, which, together with actions RCS recipients take, provide deeper insights to fuel ongoing engagement and optimize campaign performance.
“Trust is the currency of today’s digital economy and it’s most often won or lost starting where customers are — on their mobile devices,” says Brett Caine, CEO, Airship. “The addition of RCS to our platform provides our clients with a powerful new way to create the trusted, seamless experiences customers expect and accelerate conversions, growth and lasting loyalty.”
Brands can leverage RCS for high-impact use cases across industries including:
- Retail and Commerce: Announce product drops with rich carousels and “Buy Now” links or share order updates with embedded QR codes for pickup.
- Travel and Hospitality: Send appointment reminders with “Add to Calendar” and “Get Directions” buttons or deliver flight updates with options to “Change Seat.”
- Financial Services: Deliver verified transaction alerts and fraud warnings with secure actions like “Report Issue” or streamline bill payments with an integrated “Pay Now” button.
- Loyalty: Share points balances and tier updates or deliver digital welcome kits to new members.
The launch comes as RCS adoption is rapidly accelerating. Analysts report a fivefold increase in global RCS traffic since Apple rolled out iOS 18, and the channel has more than one billion monthly active users globally. Research also shows that 75% of consumers prefer RCS over SMS when interacting with brands.
Recently Airship was recognised for the first time ever in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Multichannel Marketing Hubs, which the company believes signals a market shift toward intelligent platforms that unify messaging, experiences and data.
