MTN Nigeria, a leading wireless carrier in Africa and mobile money provider, has joined forces with Google and Dotgo to leverage their platforms to launch Rich Communication Services (RCS) Business Messaging (RBM) Services to serve over 82 million subscribers on its network.
It has been suggested that the launch of the RCS business messaging service will bring about better customer engagement through conversational messaging.
Africa’s leading telecommunications network will leverage the services provided by Dotgo, such as the RCS APIs, chatbot directory, billing, payments, reconciliation, and more, to drive monetization from RCS.
The RCS Business Messaging uses the rich and interactive features of the next generation SMS that allows sharing of audio, video, images, location, etc., to enable branded business messaging.
RCS messages are securely delivered to native messaging apps such as Google Messages and Samsung Messages on Android phones. Available on 3G and 4G networks, RCS is the default messaging standard for 5G networks. As of today, RCS is available globally with over 700 million monthly active users. And also, the Dotgo’s MaaP (Messaging-as-a-Platform) is integrated with the Google Jibe RCS platform for business messaging, the world’s most advanced RCS platform that provides a high degree of scalability.
At the announcement on Thursday, Lynda Saint-Nwafor, MTN Nigeria’s chief enterprise business officer, said, “As Nigeria’s largest carrier, MTN is all set to onboard brands that can reach out to a vast majority of Nigerian customers and delight them with a user experience like never before, to boost lead generation and conversion rates. This is a great opportunity for brands to connect with the end consumers of Nigeria for sales and support.”
Srinivas Rao, chief digital officer, MTN Nigeria added, “We are proud of our technical collaboration with Google and Dotgo. The superior technology design, robust service operations, optimum business processes, and 24x7 support are key to delivering the next generation business messaging experiences to our brands and business partners at the most affordable rates. With this generational shift, we aim to further aid and accelerate digital transformation amongst the institutions, commerce and industry in Nigeria.”
Google's representative, Juliet Ehimuan, country director, Google Nigeria, said, “We are delighted to work with MTN to help bring RBM to their customers. With the highest number of subscribers in the region, RBM services on MTN will be a game-changer. Dotgo has excelled once again as one of our top partners for monetising RBM with mobile operators.”
Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO, Dotgo, added that, “The launch of RBM by MTN, the largest operator in Nigeria, will accelerate the adoption of RBM by brands in Nigeria. With the launch done, we will be working with MTN and Google to help CPaaS providers and brands in Nigeria to upgrade and incorporate RBM into their business applications.”