SAN FRANCISCO -- Mobile-first customer experience company Airship announced support for RCS (Rich Communication Services). The launch adds one of the most requested and modern messaging channels to its platform. Airship now enables brands to create rich, two-way conversations that build customer trust, combat the rise of SMS fraud and accelerate business outcomes.

In 2024, consumer losses from text-initiated scams reached $470M per the Federal Trade Commission and research from Proofpoint found a 2,534 percent 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.

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 personalized 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,” said 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 recognized 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. Get the full, complimentary report here.

Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs,” by Audrey Brosnan, Tia Smart, Suzanne Schwartz, Greg Carlucci, Julian Poulter, Matt Moorut, Julia Multedo, 22 September 2025

Gartner Disclaimers

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.