Mensagens empresariais com RCS · passo a passo interativo
Mensagens empresariais com RCS · passo a passo interativo
O RCS Deve Fazer Parte da Sua Estratégia de Mensagens Empresariais?
O RCS leva sua marca verificada, rich cards e botões para dentro do app Mensagens, que já vem instalado no Android e no iPhone. Ele também funciona de um jeito totalmente diferente do WhatsApp: os agentes são aprovados país por país, a sessão de 24 horas funciona ao contrário e o caso de uso que você registra define o que você pode enviar. Sete passos curtos mostram como o canal funciona e terminam com uma checagem de aderência ao seu primeiro mercado, para você decidir onde o RCS se encaixa no seu mix de mensagens.
O RCS leva sua marca verificada, rich cards e botões para dentro do app Mensagens, que já vem instalado no Android e no iPhone. Ele também funciona de um jeito totalmente diferente do WhatsApp: os agentes são aprovados país por país, a sessão de 24 horas funciona ao contrário e o caso de uso que você registra define o que você pode enviar. Sete passos curtos mostram como o canal funciona e terminam com uma checagem de aderência ao seu primeiro mercado, para você decidir onde o RCS se encaixa no seu mix de mensagens.
This one picture explains most of the surprises later. WhatsApp gives you one sender for the whole planet. RCS gives you one agent per country, each approved by that country's mobile carriers, each needing a local website, local terms and a local phone number.
No sender number
You get an agent
Brand name, logo, verified tick. Customers never see a sender number, and your agent profile carries a phone number and website they can tap to reach you.
Who approves
The carriers
Google hosts the platform. The mobile carriers in each country review and approve your agent, each on its own schedule. In most countries you choose which networks to launch on; a few, such as Italy, require all of them.
After launch
Nothing is editable
Name, logo, contact, privacy policy, terms. Changing any of it means un-launching and re-approval.
Step 2
The 24-hour window works backwards from WhatsApp
Both channels have a 24-hour window. They anchor it differently, and that difference decides your bill. WhatsApp's service window rolls forward from the customer's last message. RCS fixes the window from the first inbound message and does not extend it.
Before any of that applies, you choose how the sender is registered. A conversational sender can open sessions; a per-message sender never can. Switch between them below and watch the same scenario bill two different ways.
Business message (MT)Customer reply (MO)24-hour window
The same scenario, billed both ways
This is a decision you make once, at sender registration, and cannot change afterwards without your account manager.
What starts a session
A free-text reply from the customer
Tapping a suggested reply chip
Sharing a location
Tapping an "open website" button. It is not a reply, so no session opens and nothing extra is billed: the rich message stays a Single message.
Typing indicators and read receipts
Replying costs your customer nothing. RCS travels over data, so there is no per-message charge on their side.
Three rules people get wrong
The first message is re-priced, retroactively. It bills as basic or single at the moment you send it, then converts to the session rate if a reply lands inside 24 hours. Your cost logs change after the fact, so a report pulled the same afternoon will not match one pulled the next day.
Sessions only exist if the sender was registered as conversational, and that flag is set before launch and cannot be flipped afterwards without your account manager.
The United States is different. A session opens on the customer's second message, not the first, and US carriers bill customer replies as well as your own messages, in the same text and rich-media tiers. Everywhere else your customers' replies are free.
So can you send as much as you like inside the session?
This is the first question every client asks once they understand the re-pricing. The billing answer and the policy answer are different, and only one of them protects you.
Billing says yes
Google's billing rules: "the agent and user can exchange any number of messages, and the agent will be billed a fixed rate for the conversation."
RCS platforms describe the conversational option as "billed per conversation within a 24-hour window, with unlimited messages."
The only limit on a session is time. There is no cap on the number of messages inside the 24 hours, in either direction.
Policy says no
Your use case is registered, and it binds the content. A transactional agent may not send "offers, promotions, discounts, or upgrades for new or existing products and services". An OTP agent may not send anything about goods and services at all. So a transactional session cannot be turned into a promotional one, whatever the billing allows.
Reputation is the real limiter. Google scores every agent High, Medium or Low on user feedback and spam reports, and new agents start at Low. In India that means 2 initial messages per user per rolling 28 days and 1 million reachable users, against 8 and 300 million at High, with sending confined to 07:00 to 22:00. Replies to a user-initiated message are exempt from the reach limit.
In the United States it costs money. US carriers levy content violation fees under their codes of conduct, passed straight through to you. Phishing and social engineering run to several thousand euros per incident, with lower bands for illegal content and other breaches.
The short version. The session prices your traffic. It does not grant permission. Filling it with promotional messages is technically possible on a promotional or multi-use agent, free of extra charge, and it is the fastest way to a Low reputation score, a shrinking audience and, in the US, an invoice. Google is adding no-reply agents for transactional senders, which removes the accidental session entirely.
Step 3
What you are actually paying for
RCS has three price tiers per message, and content decides the tier. Text only and under 160 bytes is Basic; media, a card, a button or a longer text makes it Single. Type below and watch the byte counter.
Compose a message
How the tiers work
Tier
What triggers it
Basic
Text only, no media and no buttons, at most 160 bytes in UTF-8
Single
Any media, any card, any button, or text over 160 bytes in UTF-8
Conversational
A 24-hour session, once the customer replies. Unlimited messages inside it, one price
The limit is 160 bytes, not 160 characters. Plain Latin letters cost one byte each, accented characters like ä or ñ cost two, and most emoji cost four. So one emoji does not promote a message on its own, it just spends four of your 160. A short English message with an emoji stays Basic; a full-length German one can cross the line without looking long.
How this lands against WhatsApp. WhatsApp has no size tiers at all: it prices by template category, so a plain text and a rich carousel cost the same. That is why RCS wins promotional traffic, where the rich version is free of a category premium, and loses plain notifications, where WhatsApp utility is priced very low. Ask us for the numbers on your markets.
Sessions are not a discount by default. In several markets a session costs more than twice a Single message. It pays off only when the customer keeps replying.
Step 4
Coverage, delivery, and the rule about your headquarters
Two numbers matter per market and they are not the same thing. Coverage is the share of that country's subscribers on carriers that carry RCS at all. Delivery is the share of your sends that actually arrive. Germany looks excellent on the first and merely good on the second. Both are country averages: they differ by network, and by audience, because the handsets a younger customer base carries are not the ones a 50-plus base carries. For your first market we look at the networks your list actually sits on.
The third thing worth knowing: your headquarters decides whether traffic counts as local or international, but in most markets that label carries no price difference at all. Tell us where the company is registered and you get two tables: your own market first, then everywhere else with a straight yes or no on whether it costs you more.
Carriers set local versus international pricing by the company's registered country. Where the message lands does not decide it. A local subsidiary sometimes fixes this and sometimes does not, per country.
Markets are listed alphabetically. Nothing here re-orders itself, so a figure stays where you found it.
Your home market
Market
Coverage
Delivery
Effective reach
Every other market
Market
Coverage
Delivery
Effective reach
Costs you more?
The same markets on WhatsApp, priced a completely different way
RCS prices on what is inside the message: bytes, media, buttons, and whether a session opened. WhatsApp prices on why you are sending: the template category you registered. A plain sentence and a rich carousel cost the same on WhatsApp; on RCS they are two different tiers.
WhatsApp marketing
Flat per message
One rate per market, rich or plain. No volume tiers.
WhatsApp utility and authentication
Steps down with volume
Six volume bands per market, priced on the marginal message.
WhatsApp service
Free, for now
Replies inside an open 24-hour service window cost nothing today. Meta has announced that this will change. On RCS a session is billed.
Meta publishes its WhatsApp rates per market. We put both cards side by side for your markets during your fit assessment.
Effective reach is coverage multiplied by delivery: out of 100 numbers on a list in that market, how many you should expect to actually reach on RCS. Germany at 98% coverage and 70% delivery gives 69, so roughly seven in ten arrive and the rest need a fallback channel.
Headquarters rarely matters on price
24 of 29
markets price international traffic identically to local. Only India, Mexico and Nigeria charge a premium.
Where it does matter
46x
Nigeria charges 46 times its local rate on international traffic. India 26.5x, Mexico 3.3x. Indonesia and Peru take no international traffic at all.
Thinnest coverage
Canada, 18%
Denmark 11%, Slovakia 27%. One carrier live means most of the country cannot receive you.
Step 5
Pick the use case, and live with its rules
Every agent is registered against one use case, and the rules attached to it are not negotiable after launch. Google's four categories map onto three jobs you probably think in.
Marketing
Promotional
Where RCS earns its keep. Rich cards, carousels, buttons, weekly leaflets, contests, coupons, segmentation. In our experience, brands testing RCS alongside WhatsApp see similar open and click rates with fewer opt-outs, because RCS inboxes are not crowded yet.
Rich media pays for itself here
Runs RCS-first; numbers out of reach stay on the channel you use today
Cannot carry OTP or 2FA
India caps volume per user and restricts sending to 07:00-22:00
Transactional
Transactional
Order confirmations, shipping updates, account alerts. Reliable on the Basic tier. Delivery has to be guaranteed, so the share RCS cannot reach stays on the channel you use today.
Often needs no rich media, so Basic pricing applies
Delivery must be guaranteed: keep your current channel for the numbers RCS cannot reach
No offers, promotions or upgrades in this agent
Google is adding "no reply" agents for transactional senders, which removes the risk of an accidental session
Authentication
One-time password
The weakest case for RCS. An OTP is six digits with no media, so you pay for a channel whose whole value is media you cannot use. It also has to sit on its own dedicated agent.
Must be a separate agent. It cannot share with marketing or transactional
No product information, no promotions, ever
A plain six-digit code gets nothing from rich media, so RCS adds little here
Multi-use combines transactional and promotional in one agent, which is what most retailers want. It is unavailable in India and no longer offered in Brazil, and your launch video has to demonstrate both halves or reviewers reject it for missing functionality.
Step 6
Your first-market fit check
Four quick questions, one concise summary: how far RCS reaches your audience in the market you would launch first, whether your headquarters changes the pricing basis, and how your traffic would bill on RCS compared with WhatsApp, in units rather than euros. When you want the rates on top, we run the full simulation with you.
Step 7
What it takes to go live
Launching an RCS agent means passing carrier approval in each country. You bring the brand and the use case; we prepare the agent, submit it and follow it through review in each country.
What you bring
Your brand kit. Logo, banner, brand color, and a phone number and email address customers can actually reach.
Privacy policy and terms in the local language of every market you launch in.
A concrete opt-in. Where and how customers agree to hear from you on RCS. "At checkout, customers tick a box labeled Receive order updates via RCS" is the level of detail carriers accept.
The use case per market. Transactional, promotional, multi-use or one-time passcodes. It shapes what the agent may send, so we settle it with you first.
What we take care of
Agent setup on the RCS platform, one agent per country, configured for the session model that fits your use case.
START, STOP and HELP replies. Carriers test them before approval. We serve these keywords for you, so nothing has to be built on your side.
The launch video and submission pack carriers require, and the follow-up with each network during review.
Capability checks and delivery reporting, so you know before sending which numbers can receive RCS, what arrived afterwards, and what each message cost.
Network selection. Where a country lets you choose, we launch only on the networks your audience uses, and you pay setup fees only for those.
Good to know
Review takes two to three weeks per country, and each carrier decides on its own. Being live on some networks while others are still reviewing is normal.
The agent profile is locked after launch. Name, logo, contact details, policies. We review the whole pack with you before it goes to the carriers.
Carrier fees follow the launch. Where a network charges a setup fee, it is due when your agent goes live on that network. The United Kingdom and the United States are the exception: a third-party verification runs before launch and is charged whether or not the agent is approved.
Rates move with the carriers. Carriers set them per country and adjust them from time to time, with roughly a month's notice in Europe and the US and less elsewhere. We pass changes through at cost and show you the notice.
Many brands, one platform? Each brand is its own agent in each country. Routing a message to the right agent by destination country can be automated, so a platform with hundreds of brands does not manage it by hand.
Start with one market. One agent, one carrier set, one launch. Add markets once the first one is live and you have real numbers to plan with.
Four moves that make RCS work harder for you
Most weak RCS cases are design problems, and design problems can be fixed before launch.
Give the customer a reason to tap. A session only opens on a reply or a chip tap. Replace "Open website" links with suggested replies and your session economics turn on.
Move the multi-message journeys first. Order changes, appointment rescheduling, support follow-ups. Anything with a back and forth is what RCS sessions are built for.
Design for the rich tier. If you are paying for a card, use the card: image, title, two suggested replies. A rich message that reads like a plain text wastes the format.
Keep one-shot notifications where they are. A single shipping update nobody replies to is well served by the channel that carries it today. RCS earns its place where the customer taps back.
The decision
So, should RCS be part of your strategy now?
Cost is one input among several. The honest test is who you message, what you send, and how much conversation you expect back.
A strong case for adding it now
You run promotional or conversational journeys in markets where RCS reach is already high, such as Germany, Spain, the UK, France, Brazil or Mexico.
You want rich cards, carousels and buttons in the app customers already have open, without asking them to install or opt into another one.
You already run WhatsApp and want a second rich channel with a verified sender and an inbox that is not crowded yet.
Probably not yet
Your messages are plain, one-shot alerts nobody replies to, such as a bare delivery confirmation. Campaigns are the opposite case, and the one RCS does best.
Your target markets price your headquarters as international, or accept no international traffic at all. Step 4 and the fit check above show yours.
You need one sender for many countries, or you expect to change sender details often. RCS agents are per country and locked after launch.
Either way
RCS sits next to WhatsApp, not instead of it. The brands getting the most out of it pick one market and one use case, launch, measure, then expand.
Both channels report sent, delivered and read. Neither tells you what a message earned. Plan attribution before launch.
We run the numbers for your markets and volumes before you commit to an agent, so the first launch is the right one.
Ready to see where RCS fits for you?
Tell us your markets, use cases and monthly volumes. We come back with a fit assessment, the pricing for your markets and a launch plan for the first country.
