The RCS and Messaging Glossary

RCS is the carrier-grade successor to SMS, delivering rich media, branded sender identity, read receipts, and 2-way interactivity inside the native messages app on every supported phone.

RCS Business Messaging is Google's program that lets verified brands send rich, interactive RCS messages to Android phones and to iPhones on iOS 18 and later, through approved partners and carrier networks.

MaaP is the carrier-hosted infrastructure that exposes RCS as a programmable platform for brands, handling routing, capabilities, identity, and chatbot integration on top of the operator network.

A CPaaS is a cloud platform that exposes voice, SMS, RCS, email, and chat capabilities as APIs so developers can embed messaging and calling into their applications without building carrier integrations from scratch.

A carrier aggregator is a wholesale messaging provider with direct connections to mobile network operators, used by CPaaS platforms and large brands to send SMS and RCS at scale across many carriers through a single API.

Google's Jibe platform is the MaaP infrastructure that powers RCS Business Messaging on most carrier networks, providing the agent management, capability lookup, and message routing for verified brands.

Apple Messages for Business is Apple's verified business messaging program for iPhone, separate from RCS, that lets registered brands hold rich 2-way conversations inside the native Messages app.

SMS is plain text capped at 160 characters with no branding or interactivity. RCS is rich, branded, 2-way, and runs in the same native messages app, with SMS as the automatic fallback.

A2P messaging is any message sent from a software application to a person, including SMS alerts, RCS marketing, OTPs, and 2-way conversational AI, distinct from peer-to-peer texts between humans.

An AI agent in messaging is a software entity that holds 2-way conversations with customers over channels like RCS, understands intent, takes actions on the brand's systems, and hands off to humans when needed.

Conversational commerce is the practice of running the entire purchase or service journey, from discovery through transaction, inside a 2-way messaging conversation rather than across a website or app.

An OTP is a short, single-use code sent to a user (typically via SMS or RCS) to verify identity during login, signup, or sensitive transactions, and a major chunk of all A2P messaging volume.

Two-way messaging is any flow where the customer can reply to a brand's message and have that reply read, understood, and acted on, as opposed to one-way blasts where replies go nowhere.

Click-to-RCS is a deep-link or QR-code flow that opens a pre-populated RCS conversation with a specific brand agent, so a website visitor or scanned-code user lands directly inside the messages app.

MMS is the legacy multimedia messaging protocol that adds basic image and audio support to SMS. RCS is the modern successor with high-resolution media, branded sender identity, rich cards, and 2-way interactivity.

A rich card is an RCS message format combining a hero image or video, title, description, and tappable action buttons inside a single visually framed card, often arranged into swipeable carousels.

Suggested replies and actions are the tappable buttons under an RCS message that let users respond, call a number, open a URL, or trigger a calendar invite without typing.

Fallback to SMS is the automatic platform behavior that delivers an RCS message as a plain SMS when the recipient's device, carrier, or current state does not support RCS, ensuring no message is lost.

A business messaging API is the developer interface a CPaaS or platform exposes for sending, receiving, and managing messages across SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, and other channels through a unified set of endpoints.

A verified sender is a brand whose identity has been confirmed by carriers and platforms so its messages display a trusted business name, logo, and verification badge instead of an anonymous number.

Brand verification is the carrier and platform approval process that confirms a business's identity, registers its brand assets, and authorizes it to send messages under a verified name and logo.