RCS Business Messaging: the new channel businesses should start considering

RCS is now available on Zapify as another channel for businesses to communicate with their customers, alongside WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and webchat. But looking at RCS merely as an improved version of SMS considerably limits its potential.

RCS Business Messaging turns the phone’s messaging app into a real communication channel between businesses and customers — with brand identity, images, buttons and interactive cards, features until now more associated with apps like WhatsApp. That’s why RCS shouldn’t be thought of as just a secondary channel. It can become one of the central channels in companies’ communication strategy over the coming years.

What is RCS Business Messaging?

RCS stands for Rich Communication Services — an evolution of traditional phone messaging that makes it possible to build a much richer experience between businesses and customers, without the customer needing to install any new app. With RCS Business Messaging, a business can send messages with:

• A verified sender, showing the company’s name and logo, instead of an unknown number.
• Rich cards and carousels with an image, title, description and buttons.
• Quick replies and direct links to actions, like opening a link or confirming an appointment with a single tap.
• Delivery and read receipts, just like WhatsApp.

It all happens directly in the phone’s messaging app, using the customer’s own phone number — nothing to install and no new account to create.

Much more than an SMS replacement

A traditional text message essentially transmits information. RCS makes it possible to create an interaction. Instead of sending just “You have an appointment tomorrow at 3pm.”, a business can present its identity and offer options directly, such as “Confirm appointment”, “Change time” or “Talk to the business”. The same principle can be applied to sales, support, bookings, orders, marketing campaigns or customer win-back.

RCS or WhatsApp?

For many years, WhatsApp was practically the natural choice for building a conversational experience over the phone — and it remains the main support channel, especially in Portugal. But the emergence and evolution of RCS is starting to change that picture. The question stops being “should we use WhatsApp or RCS?” and becomes “which channel is more efficient for each type of customer interaction?”. In many cases, the best answer is to use both — RCS for compatible customers, WhatsApp for the rest, all within the same multichannel strategy.

How RCS billing works

The RCS Business Messaging standard defines two billing categories for a channel/agent:

• Non-conversational — every message is billed individually, always. This is the model suited to one-off, one-way sends: transactional notifications, confirmations, reminders.
• Conversational — messages also start out billed individually, but when the customer replies in a qualifying way (a message, a quick reply, or a location share) within a window, that exchange is reclassified and billed as a single 24-hour conversation, instead of message by message. Outside the US, a single reply from the customer is enough to open that window; in the US, the model requires four qualifying messages exchanged within the same period.

As with WhatsApp — where Meta sets the network cost of the message and Zapify charges separately for its own operation (automation, campaigns, AI, shared inbox) — on RCS the network cost per message or per conversation is set by the carrier that connects Zapify to the RCS network, not by Zapify. Zapify is preparing the RCS channel to support the conversational model, so that operations with several exchanges per conversation — support, sales, service — can benefit from the same kind of economic advantage that already exists today on WhatsApp.

When RCS makes sense

RCS is a particularly strong choice in scenarios such as:

1. One-off transactional notifications — order confirmation, delivery notice, appointment reminder.
2. Marketing campaigns — when RCS’s rich card justifies the investment compared with a plain SMS, with the advantage that, if the customer replies, the conversation can be handled cost-effectively under the conversational model.
3. Support and sales with several exchanges per conversation — under the conversational model, cost no longer scales message by message.
4. Customers without WhatsApp — a residual segment in Portugal, but one that exists, for whom RCS is a much better alternative than plain SMS.

Why businesses should start testing RCS now

Waiting until a channel is fully mainstream usually means starting late. RCS is developing quickly: Apple already supports the protocol on iPhone in several markets, and Google keeps expanding the RCS for Business infrastructure. In Portugal, reach today is concentrated mainly on compatible Android devices — the main Portuguese carriers (MEO, NOS, Vodafone) don’t yet appear in Apple’s documentation as supporting RCS on iPhone, unlike markets such as Spain or the UK. That doesn’t remove the opportunity: it lets businesses start testing the channel, understand response rates and find out where RCS can complement WhatsApp, ahead of any eventual expansion of the channel.

RCS on Zapify

On Zapify, RCS integrates into the same shared inbox already used for WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and webchat — same queue, same history per contact, same AI assistant where applicable. Activation happens per account, with our team walking you through the billing model before the channel goes live — so the decision to use RCS is always an informed one.

Frequently asked questions

Does RCS replace WhatsApp on Zapify? No. WhatsApp remains the main support channel; RCS is added as an extra channel, with its own billing model.

Is every RCS message always billed individually? It depends on the channel’s billing category. A non-conversational channel is always billed per message. A conversational channel can group several messages exchanged within 24 hours into a single conversation charge, when there is a qualifying reply from the customer.

Who sets the cost of each RCS message or conversation? The network cost is set by the carrier that connects Zapify to the RCS network — just as Meta sets the network cost of WhatsApp. Zapify charges separately for its own operation (automation, campaigns, AI, shared inbox).

Does RCS work on every phone? RCS Business Messaging works on Android devices with RCS support enabled. In Portugal, support on iPhone still depends on the carrier. Where the device or carrier doesn’t support RCS, the message can fall back to plain SMS.

How do I activate RCS on my Zapify account? Talk to our team — activation includes a conversation about the billing model, so you know exactly what to expect before the channel goes live.