With 2020 set to see 160 million messages, new data from Juniper Research has predicted that the "substantial growth" in RCS is being driven by "the increasing popularity of CPaaS (Communications-as-a-Platform) services amongst brands and enterprises".
Juniper Research said the "ability of CPaaS platforms to fall back to the ubiquity of SMS will encourage brands and enterprises to explore RCS messaging whilst guaranteeing final message termination".
Research author Sam Barker, added: "As CPaaS platforms are increasingly adopted by brands and enterprises for outbound communication, they must leverage the rich-media nature of RCS to provide clear advantages over established SMS protocols and benefit from the increased revenue attainable from RCS busines messaging."
The research identified two key areas that are critical to providing increased value of RCS over SMS: the introduction of conversational commerce and efficient brand authentication processes. Conversational commerce includes the eCommerce activities accomplished over RCS clients.
The study said CPaaS will have an opportunity to minimise the complexity of RCS over the next two years to encourage adoption as a business messaging technology. Although RCS enables more comprehensive billing mechanisms, the report urged CPaaS providers to keep a simple price-per-message billing system, similar to SMS business messaging, for familiarity.
However, the report warned that CPaaS platforms must "remain agile to changing demand in monetisation models", and must be open to future ecosystems where closer partnerships between CPaaS players and retailers create revenue sharing models and drive conversational commerce over RCS clients.
