RCS for Business: What a Brand Can Actually Send

RCS is the carrier-standard successor to SMS — group chat, typing indicators, read receipts, real media. The GSMA's Universal Profile is what keeps it interoperable across networks and handsets (GSMA, Rich Communication Services, retrieved 3 November 2026).

RCS for Business is the commercial layer on top of it — the name Google's current documentation uses for what older write-ups still call RBM. A brand does not message from a number the way it does on SMS. It messages through an agent, and the direction of travel is fixed: Google's own description of how it works states that the agent initiates conversations and that users cannot start one (retrieved 3 November 2026). A customer can reply freely once you have opened the thread, but they cannot message you first.

You also do not sign up as a shop. Access runs through registered partners, and Google gates that behind a partner registration interest form. For an owner-operated store that means RCS is something a provider brings you, not a switch in an admin panel — the same shape as the WhatsApp Business Platform, where the flows and growth tools a Shopify shop actually runs also sit on a provider's integration rather than on your own API access. And if the recipient's device has no RCS, the platform returns a 404 and the sender has to fall back to SMS. Nobody runs RCS alone.

Every agent carries a declared use case, and the use case decides the rules. Google documents four, with availability and business rules that vary by country (Google, Agent use cases and business rules, retrieved 3 November 2026):

• OTP — one-time passwords and 2FA only. No product information, no offers.
• Transactional — order confirmations, shipping updates, account and product information, feedback requests. No offers, promotions, discounts or upgrades.
• Promotional — sales and marketing, including abandoned-cart follow-ups. No OTP, and no time-sensitive transactional information.
• Multi-use — transactional and promotional in one conversation, such as a shipping notice followed by a related offer. Still no OTP or password resets.

For a shop that is the whole decision. Order updates and campaigns on one agent means Multi-use. There is a concession for it: Google lists Germany among the countries where a multi-use agent may launch with only one active use case — but you then owe the support team proof of the second use case within six months of launch, with a three-month extension available if you ask inside that window. Miss the final deadline and the agent is converted to a single-use agent (same source).

The format, mostly. A rich card combines media, a title, a description and tappable suggestions in one message, and the limits are specific (Google, Rich cards, retrieved 3 November 2026):

• Title up to 200 characters, description up to 2,000. Emoji and multi-byte characters count as 2–4 each.
• Up to four suggested replies or actions on the card, plus up to eleven suggestion chips beneath it.
• Images, GIFs and video, at three media heights: 112, 168 or 264 density-independent pixels.
• Carousels of up to ten vertical cards, with a maximum rich card payload of 250 KB.

The caveat is in the same documentation, and it is worth reading before anyone designs a carousel: rich card support depends on device capabilities, rendering is affected by screen size and resolution, and Google tells partners to run capability checks against the target audience and test on real devices. Content that overflows is truncated in a defined order — description first, then title, then suggestions removed entirely. A card that looks right in a mock-up is not evidence that it will look right on a five-year-old Android.

Two things have to happen, and they happen in a fixed order. Brand verification is submitted once per agent, before the first launch request: an authorised representative at the brand confirms the agent information and your right to manage it. Google is explicit that this must be an individual's email address rather than a distribution list, because the brand has to reply to a mandatory authorisation request. You may also upload supporting documents such as authorisation letters — PDF, maximum 50 MB, up to five files (Google, Brand verification, retrieved 3 November 2026). Once that clears, Google Messages shows a verification checkmark next to the agent's name.

Then comes launch approval. Google-managed launches take 1–3 business days, conditional on brand approval arriving within 24 hours and on a working website, live Privacy Policy and Terms of Service links, and either a preview video or step-by-step transcripts of your trigger, interaction and opt-out flows (Google, Launch approval, retrieved 3 November 2026). Carrier-managed networks run their own process, and the documentation is blunt about it: those carriers reject your launch if no contract is in place with them.

A working STOP flow is a prerequisite, not a nice-to-have — the agent must support STOP and its equivalents in every language it serves, and after the confirmation message it may send nothing further until the user opts in again. If you already run WhatsApp, you have had this conversation: what happens when a customer replies STOP applies almost unchanged. One thing to watch: Google states that at a later date a valid verification token issued by a recognised verification authority will be required to launch on certain carriers, and that clients will eventually validate tokens directly. No timeline has been announced, so treat it as a pending requirement rather than a current one.

Straight answer first: Keaz does not send RCS. We run WhatsApp on Shopify, and nothing in this article is a product announcement. What follows is how we would reason about the channel if you asked us over coffee.

RCS and WhatsApp solve the same problem from opposite ends. RCS lands in the default messaging app, so reach is a function of the handset and the carrier, and you inherit a delivery path you do not control. WhatsApp lands in an app the customer chose to install, so reach is a function of your contact base — which is something you can measure, grow and act on this quarter. For a DACH store, the second number is the one you can move. The Audience overview shows where reachability is recorded against each contact.

Consent is the part that transfers. Whatever the channel, the rule holds: explicit, documented opt-in, and an exit that is as cheap as the entry was. How opt-in levels control subscribing and unsubscribing is the mechanism on our side; the principle is channel-agnostic. And none of this displaces email. Messaging complements it — short, timely, transactional-adjacent — while email keeps the long-form work. If you want the three channels compared head to head, our RCS vs SMS vs WhatsApp breakdown does that job.

• Budgeting for the build and forgetting the review. The agent is days of work; the approval is the dependency with other people in it.
• Declaring Transactional and then sending a discount. The use case is a commitment, not a label, and the review checks your transcripts against it.
• Taking the Multi-use single-use concession and forgetting the six-month clock. The downgrade is automatic if the proof never arrives.
• Putting the brand contact's shared mailbox in the verification form. Google asks for an individual, and a distribution list is where the authorisation email goes to die.
• Designing carousels against one test handset. Rendering depends on device capability; run the capability check before the design, not after.
• Planning RCS as a replacement rather than an addition. The 404-and-fall-back-to-SMS path is part of the design from day one.