Reliance Jio, Apple launch new RCS pricing for businesses in India, challenging WhatsApp

Mumbai: Reliance Jio has introduced new pricing for rich communication services (RCS) messaging for businesses following partnership with Apple to extend RCS support for iOS users since the start of September. With this, Apple has formally entered India's business messaging market alongside Google, posing a challenge to WhatsApp’s dominant position in the rich, two-way messaging segment.

Until now, RCS on iPhones was limited to person-to-person (P2P) communication. Apple and Google made the messaging standard interoperable between iOS and Android globally. ET was the first to report in India in August 2025 that Apple had partnered with Jio to bring RCS to iPhone users. However, brands will also be able to send application-to-person (A2P) messages—including marketing, transactional and one-time password (OTP) messages—to iPhone users on Jio's network, said people familiar with the development.

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Apple is gradually enabling business RCS across key markets including the US, UK, Germany, France and Spain in partnership with local telecom operators. Pricing, though, is determined by telecom carriers and varies across markets based on competitive dynamics. Apple and Google do not set commercial RCS tariffs, which are largely governed by telecom operators.

In India, Jio has taken the lead in declaring the new rates. It has also introduced separate categories (marketing, transactional, OTP) to compete more effectively with WhatsApp.

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Businesses will pay Rs 0.27-0.30 per marketing message with effect from September 1, Rs 0.25 for transactional messages and Rs 0.11-0.16 for OTPs, according to emails seen by ET. The move replaces the earlier flat RCS pricing of Rs 0.08-0.10 per message, translating into a 10% to nearly 300% increase depending on the message category.

Rival operators Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel are also expected to onboard the Apple RCS ecosystem soon. The tripartite partnership among Apple, Google and telcos is a strong competitive front to counter WhatsApp’s dominance, even though telcos have long criticised OTT messaging channels for operating unregulated.

Jio, Apple, Google, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel did not respond to ET’s queries.

The tie-up comes at a time when RCS adoption is accelerating in India, which is emerging as the leading market for the service by volume. The Jio partnership is being seen as a key step in pushing adoption at scale, given the Mukesh Ambani-owned telecom operator’s subscriber base of more than 533.3 million.

RCS is a messaging standard developed by global telecom industry body GSMA in 2007 to upgrade SMS by including features such as read receipts, file sharing, group chats, location sharing and encryption to the messages.

According to a recent study by Juniper Research, telecom operators are expected to generate $2 billion globally from RCS for business traffic in 2026, up from $1.2 billion last year. By 2030, this figure is expected to touch $6.5 billion annually, driven by Apple’s ongoing implementation of RCS for business on iPhones, increasing support from mobile operators and evolving price strategies.